How to Edit your Wardrobe

Have you ever said, ‘I have nothing to wear,’ yet your wardrobe is crammed full of clothes.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by too much choice, can never find a particular item in your wardrobe or feel stuck in a rut?

If you can see yourself nodding to these questions, it might time to edit and declutter your wardrobe. Did you know the average woman in the UK wears 20% of her wardrobe 80% of the time? Make 2024 the year to start wearing ALL your wardrobe. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing my top tips on how to create your dream wardrobe.

TOP TIPS ON HOW TO EDIT YOUR WARDROBE THIS WINTER

1. Start by putting yourself in a good mood by playing uplifting music, lighting a candle and preparing to be ruthless!

2. Remove all items one category at a time (trousers, dresses, jumpers etc) and place them on your bed.

3. Try on each item and check it still fits and is comfortable. Ask yourself, DO I LOVE IT? DOES IT SPARK JOY?

4. Be ruthless! If the item of clothing doesn’t give you joy, doesn’t make you feel con dent or is tired or needs repairing, REMOVE FROM YOUR WARDROBE.

5. Place your clothes into 3 separate piles - donate to charity, sell (Vinted or Deepop are great selling sites) or repair (do this immediately otherwise it won’t happen)

6. Neatly place all items that deserve a space back into your wardrobe. Organise into categories and arrange into colours so it is easier to find when getting dressed.

You will then have a wardrobe that you will wear more than 20% of the time! If this task seems daunting, do a little everyday rather than all in one go. If you feel overwhelmed by this, hire an expert to help you. It’s what I love doing best. 

Stunning Staircases

In many homes the staircase is simply a means of getting between floors, constructed as cheaply as possible while taking up the minimum amount of space. In fact, your staircase can be an attractive architectural feature in its own right, and you don’t have to live in a stately home to make the most of it.

Staircases probably reached their low point in the 1970s when houses tended to be thrown up quickly and cheaply. Frequently located at the side of the living room, they were made out of cheap painted timber with diagonal planks used as railings. Transforming them into something far more attractive is easier and less expensive than you might think. Staircases are available in partly assembled kits these days in a wide range of configurations, and a joiner can t a new staircase in less than a day.

Go for something that fits in with the age of the property – with a 70s home you might want to go for an ultra-modern look with slender balusters or even glass side panels set in a stainless steel frame.

In a Victorian property, something more ornate is appropriate, with turned balusters and newel posts.

If you have a large hallway, particularly a square shaped one, then the world is your oyster. Instead of a straight staircase running up the side of the hall, think about using one or more winders (90 degree turns) in the staircase. They are more interesting and make a better use of space. You could run the stairs up two walls of the hallway or even have a gallery staircase, a central half- fight of stairs with two half- fights running from either side. Solid oak construction really makes a statement if you can afford it.

Carpeted staircases are both safer and quieter than exposed wooden treads and using a striped carpet really adds visual impact. For a truly classy look, go for a central carpet runner and don’t be afraid to use bold colours and patterns. Don’t forget that new staircases must comply with current building regulations.

The Quintessential English Orangery

The original orangeries were rather grand must-have accessories to Victorian country homes. A single floor extension, although it might have a double height ceiling, it had more windows than you would usually expect and, most importantly, a glass roof. The idea was that the insulation and heating of a normal room combined with all that sunlight flooding through the ceiling made it possible to grow your very own orange tree.

Today, the orangery is making a comeback, even though you can just buy your oranges from the supermarket. The walls can be constructed from stone or brick to match the rest of the house, although oak frame structures are becoming increasingly popular. Rather than constructing a bespoke glass roof, it’s usual to build skylights into a at roof, either a large central one or several units. Skylights are available in a wide range of standard sizes which reduces construction costs considerably.

In an ideal world, the orangery should be built on a south facing side of the property so that it gets the sunlight all year round. Building on the north facing side rather defeats the object. Even though using standard size skylights saves money, an orangery tends to cost more to build than a conventional extension because of all the extra glazing. For this reason, they are best employed as rooms that get a lot of use – kitchen dining rooms and open plan living spaces are very popular.

With the light and airiness of a conservatory but none of the disadvantages, orangeries can make truly stunning rooms both inside and out and, because they are effectively a single storey extension, it is relatively easy to get planning permission. Many home-improvement firms that offer windows and conservatories now offer orangeries too, and there are contractors that specialise in building them. However, the most cost-effective option may be to use a regular builder.

Thanks to global warming, it is now possible to grow orange trees outside in England. Even so, building an orangery is one of the best ways to enhance your home.

True Grit

In a world rapidly being consumed by wild res, epic storms, tsunamis and relentless droughts, the fact that we can still maintain a semblance of normality with our English garden traditions is amazing. However, it is obvious that the gods of climate change are making it increasingly challenging to maintain pristine stripey lawns without lots of environmentally unfriendly help, and a lot of our ‘normal’ garden plants that we’ve been growing for years are suddenly turning turtle for no apparent reason.

Freakish feast or famine weather patterns mean that plants are either baking in Saharan style conditions or drowning in a chilly bog – which, for anyone who’s survived a camping holiday in what we’ve laughingly called a summer this year will be all too familiar. So, now’s the time to show some true grit and take a few lessons from our Mediterranean friends; let’s embrace a bit of the hard, crunchy stuff to create more resilient and interesting gardens.

Gravel comes in a myriad of sizes, colours and shapes and is part of the wider family of geology that are normally grouped as aggregates. The smallest variety, pea gravel, creates a lovely soft surface but has an annoying habit of migrating all over the place, carried in the tread of your boots or the paws of pets. A better option is a chipped gravel between 10 and 20mm in diameter which tends to bind together and is normally available in a nice blend of golden shades, which look excellent even in wet conditions.

You could opt for more garish materials such as crushed slate or even crushed glass (!) but for me it is far better to work with something that will blend in with other materials in the garden and, even better still, has been locally quarried. The gravel layer should be approximately 5cm (2 inches in the old money!) thick, so if you are buying in standard 25Kg bags, you will cover about 0.6 square metres.

It is normal to lay a sheet of weed suppressing porous membrane (not impermeable polythene!) over the soil surface before applying the gravel layer. This will give a purely decorative low maintenance finish, like poor man’s paving. Personally, I prefer to ‘garden’ my gravel areas, so I leave out the membrane which allows easier access for the plant roots into the soil beneath. The gravel reflects most of the damaging rays of the sun, while at the same time providing a lovely radiating warmth coupled with near perfect drainage that takes any surface water straight down to the roots. With no water hanging around the ‘necks’ of the plants, there is far less likelihood of damage to them during freezing spells, which is just as big a killer as having no water at all.

With some nice edgings, be they stone, wood or Corten steel, the gravel garden can be a beautiful space filled with interesting plants. Plus, you will hardly have to water or weed your garden – and definitely not mow it. The planting possibilities are endless, because the sharp drainage opens up a whole new world of ‘edimentals,’ including all the usual Mediterranean herbs such as lavender, thyme, and rosemary, but also a few more interesting specials such as ‘society garlic.’

Although not a Mediterranean plant, this South African beauty has similar habits to its close cousin the agapanthus and both will thrive in gravel with minimum attention. I planted a few different colour variants of society garlic, or Tulbaghia to give it it’s proper name, in my own gravelled courtyard and they haven’t stopped flowering all summer. More importantly, after a taste test I can con rm that the leaves do have a nice garlicky flavour and you can use them in salads just like chives. Happily, unlike proper garlic, eating them allows you to go out in public without embarrassingly bad breath!

Garden or Minefield - Jonathan Wild

I’m sure we’ve all got our own horror stories about unscheduled A&E visits with family and friends through garden related incidents. I remember clearly when my dad chopped the end of his toe off, courtesy of the lawnmower, and the time my brother jumped off the coal bunker onto the end of a rake which sprang back into his face - ouch!

Personally, I’ve had a few incidents involving crushed fingers courtesy of paving slabs and had a few stitches inserted into my leg – the result of a pane of greenhouse glass snapping in two. Hindsight is a great thing and I’m sure that all these accidents could have been avoided with a little forethought and care, although I had to laugh at a headline I spotted the other day – ‘Brian May hospitalized after  "ripping his buttocks to shreds’’ in gardening accident’. Not sure what on earth he was up to but it just goes to show that it can happen to anyone – and your buttocks are (weirdly) as vulnerable as any other body parts!

Removing trip hazards = less accidents!

Most accidents happen for completely inane reasons such as wearing the wrong clothes (particularly footwear) or using the wrong tools for the job. I’ve nearly gone head over tit on many occasions walking on the wet paving in the garden in my ‘go to’ Crocs and my gardening gloves never seem man enough to prevent me getting pricked by a thousand thorns when pruning the roses. Thankfully, I’ve never picked up an infection from these painful lacerations and I can only hope that Brian’s backside remains similarly infection free – even though the threat from unseen nasties such as Legionella, tetanus, Weil’s disease and salmonella is frighteningly high. Personally, I find a tube of Germolene the perfect antidote for  all these infections – it smells as if it could kill all known germs, and that’s good enough for me.

Tripping and falling in gardens is always a problem and embarrassingly these things happen all the time – even when completely sober. Changing levels from one section of paving to another needs careful consideration and for people with limited vision it can be a complete nightmare. If it’s not obvious that you need to step up or down (particularly when it is dark) by using a change of materials and illuminating the hazard, then accidents can and will happen. Only last week I was surveying a garden where the owners wanted a garden with minimal changes of level, but the garden was on such a steep slope across its width that it was virtually impossible to achieve without large scale earth works. I’m still working on the best solution which will allow them to enjoy their plot in as much safety as possible without having to complete a risk assessment every time they want to pick some flowers. 

Confucius Say...

Gardening is but a simple pastime - you plant something in the soil, give it some water, make sure it gets a bit of sunshine and, hey presto, you are in business. No drama, and on the face of it something which wouldn’t tax even the most hopeless of grownups. For any kids reared on a diet of Blue Peter and hours of digging in the school garden it would be a walk in the park. 

The most baffling thing for the majority of us though is what are all these flowers called? For those of us (not me I hasten to add!) who have been schooled in Latin, using the scientific names for the plants is a reasonable way of identifying flowers – a good example is the Sunflower for which the Latin name is Helianthus. 

The Helios bit means sun, pretty obvious eh? However, you would probably be bamboozled by something a bit more tricky such as Schizanthus. It doesn’t get any easier when you realise that there are also alternative names for all these plants - normally derived from the local dialect, they are generally referred to as common names. 

Digging for Victory!

Hey, another interesting article from SE10 Magazine, shout out to Jonathan. A few weeks before the virus really struck home in the UK and we were all dragged into the world of lock-down and furloughing (why does this sound
so horticultural?), I finally realised that, after years of avoiding the issue, I needed to join the ranks of the allotmenteers. What really swung it was a dog walk through the local allotment patch. I looked at the plethora of little plots with ramshackle sheds and homemade greenhouses; the enterprise and creativity on show was incredible - I just had to have one! I tracked down the Allotmenteer-in-Chief and virtually begged to be allowed into this venerable club. A few weeks later my wish came true and we had been ‘allotted’ our very own piece of England.

To be fair this, wasn’t my first encounter with the world of allotments. During my degree I did my final dissertation on what was gloriously entitled “The Nature and Future of Urban Allotment Systems.” For an entire summer I became an allotment groupie – hanging around with old blokes in flat caps while being regaled by stories of their monster cucumbers and the best homing pigeons in Rotherham. Amazingly, my dissertation did draw some useful conclusions – one of the most interesting being that not everyone had a flat cap and quite a few were middle-class “lifestyle” practitioners. Some of these people even had proper jobs and were bringing new methods and crops to the ranks of cabbages and carrots. Beehives, bantams and exotic fruit and vegetables were starting to infiltrate the site, much to the amusement of the old boys – and some even had the audacity to ignore vegetables altogether and cultivate flowers instead!

Wild things

Here is another interesting gardening article from our Magazine by Jonathan Wild. I had to give a presentation yesterday to a group
 of Council leaders and parks professionals on
 the pros and cons of introducing more naturalistic landscapes into public open spaces. you know, meadows, wildflowers and the like... landscapes which need little input but which give a huge amount of benefit to both people and our beleaguered wildlife. at the end of the talk, virtually every question was about how to create these ‘wild spaces,’ leading me to suspect (and hope) that most of them were going to go home and create their own little haven for bees and butterflies.

Better Than Chanel

As a by-product of the severe dose of man-flu I enjoyed over the Christmas period, my normally reliable sense of smell deserted me completely. Aside from the positives of being immune to Ripley the dog’s personal habits, being unable to enjoy nature’s more pleasant olfactory pleasures was a real problem, particularly as one of my all-time favourite scented shrubs is just coming into its prime - Daphne bholua ‘Jaqueline Postill’... more simply known as Jaqueline to her friends!

Considering her inauspicious beginnings in the clearance section amongst various other garden centre scrag ends, my own Jaqueline has blossomed in an Eliza Doolittle-esque manner, from a scrawny undernourished twiglet into a handsome small shrub. She’s still a spotty youth in real terms; once fully grown she should double in size to approximately 2m but, like all Daphnes, she doesn’t do anything quickly which is why they aren’t cheap to buy. 

Meadowology - Incorporating Meadows into Garden Design

As Maureen Lipman once said, “If it’s an ology, then it’s got to be clever” In the world of meadows and “Meadowology,” the really clever bit started with the work of James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett at the University of Sheffield, back in the late nineties.

Their work pioneered the creation of new seeded landscapes, creating cost-effective meadow
areas that offered more than a nod to their native counterparts but were far superior in terms of the range of flowers on display, not to mention how long they kept flowering for. The zenith of their work was to be seen at the Olympic Park in London, created for the 2012 Olympic Games. The Park provided a showcase for many of their unique meadow products and techniques to a global audience.

Apocalypse Survivors

Here is another interesting article from SE10 Magazine. OK, so maybe it hasn’t been quite an apocalypse but, following this summer’s heatwave, most gardens have been either abandoned as being beyond hope or have gone into a deep summer hibernation. Lawns have dried up and herbaceous borders are looking beyond any mortal help – the only consolation being that they will, in all probability, live to fight another day. However, that day won’t be until next season, and who’s to say this heatwave pattern isn’t going to be a regular occurrence now that America and China have decided to superheat the earth’s atmosphere?!

Personally, I think we’ve all had a stark reminder that we are in the midst of a sea change for the traditional English climate; it’s possible that our ‘meat and two veg’ mainstay of formal lawns surrounded by flowering borders could be consigned to the history books. Percy Thrower will be turning in his grave at the thought of an English garden stripped of all its high maintenance (but stunning) Delphiniums, Phlox’s and other stalwarts – but he was around to witness the last mega heatwave in 1976, so maybe he had an inkling that the writing was on the wall anyway?!

The Autumn Bulbfest

Now is the perfect time to dig a hole, lob in the bulb of your choice and wait for your horticultural high explosive to do its thing – gardening doesn’t come any easier than this! And what a choice - garden centres, supermarkets and even garage forecourts are stuffed to the gunnells with everything from little firecrackers such as anemones and scillas to tree lilies which grow to over 2 metres tall. 

The only difficult bit is trying to choose from the hundreds of colourful packets on the display stands, because all of them are a bargain compared to the price of plants in pots - only a packet of seed makes more financial sense!

Bedtime...

As I write this we are expecting the first frost of
the year which, in the horticultural world, is a fairly significant event in that it sorts out the men from the boys in the borders. Like all keen gardeners,
I have been awaiting this event with a certain amount of trepidation; I know that from now until next spring (whenever that may be in our topsy turvy climatic scheme of things!) the borders will take on a completely different feel. 

Most of the colourful perennials and certainly all the traditional bedding plants will now be but happy memories – leaving
a brilliant but subtle display of berries, fruits and dying leaves. For most, this period of gardening abstinence, where the lawnmower, hedge cutters and weeding paraphanalia can safely hibernate
for a few months, is a blessed relief but for others including yours truly it is the best time of year to get stuck in and lay the foundations for next year.

The Return of the Garden Room and The Benefits

Building a Garden room can be beneficial to your health. Ask yourself why is being outdoor important? The function of the garden room are endless for the family, if you can’t get out of the house, perhaps getting  into the garden room is a step in the right direction, it can be a relaxation area for you, family meals can be livened up outdoors, social gatherings can be hosted there, the body, brain, immune system boosting, vitamin D intake, energy and improving your mood level, skin need fresh air – you get the idea.

Garden rooms used to be very popular, particularly with large detached houses. Typically built onto a south facing wall, they were single story extensions with plenty of windows and patio doors opening onto the garden. They fell out of fashion following the arrival of prefabricated conservatories, but now they are making a comeback.

Flowers to Bring Tears to Your Eyes

Here is another gardening article by Jonathan Wild from our own SE10 Magazine. Without them the French would be soup-less and as for us, can you imagine Hot Dogs sans onions or, God forbid, tripe without an onion or two to enrich the experience? No? Exactly! Ditto, I find it hard
to imagine a situation out in the borders where ornamental onions (or Alliums to give them their official title) wouldn’t be served up as an essential ingredient or, at the very least, an important side- order in any early summer display. They are such stylish and easy plants and available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes – no serious Chelsea garden would be without them, so why not try a few in your own garden?

No Man's Land

Whenever I’m asked to look at someone’s garden, either to draw up a new design or improve what
is already there, I always try to ascertain who is responsible for the various boundaries surrounding the property. We are lucky to live in a relatively peaceful country, but as an island nation that  has been invaded over the centuries by Vikings, Romans, Germans (nearly!), Tesco’s and the grey squirrel, we take the integrity of our property very seriously. Whilst we might no longer have to face marauding scoundrels from overseas, we now have a new homegrown enemy to repel in the form of noise and air pollution – against which a well thought out barrier is a great first defence.

Standing Out From The Crowd

I’m a sucker for a good garden centre and I seem
 to have spent half my life in them, either searching for something new or simply whiling away a few hours in a convivial atmosphere. Just like anyone else who has a smidgin of interest in plants and gardening, I have also spent a small fortune on them but, on balance, most of my children’s meagre inheritance has been invested on the rare, the special and the sometimes downright expensive horticultural treasures that are only available via the interweb.

Their exclusivity and scarcity means that to buy some of these plants you have to go on a waiting list, but only after passing a stringent vetting procedure to check that you are a responsible adult who will be offering the best possible home to their precious babies. 

Contemporary.....Mio?!

Here is another brilliant article from our SE10 Magazine and we also give it to Jonathan Wild, A thoroughly modern gardener. Being a reasonably down-to-earth Yorkshireman, I tend to favour a ‘meat and two veg’ kind of garden which is stuffed with plants, lots of nice curving paths, big borders, a pond full of critters, a bit of lawn and of course a Man Shed for escapism. However, it is becoming more apparent that my Garden Yorkshireness isn’t something that is universally accepted, as more and more people just want a garden they can enjoy and relax in, rather than slave over every spare moment they have. 

No Man's Land

Another interesting article from Jonathan Wild. Gardening is but a simple pastime - you plant something in the soil, give it some water, make sure it gets a bit of sunshine and, hey presto, you are in business. No drama, and on the face of it something which wouldn’t tax even the most hopeless of grown- ups. For any kids reared on a diet of Blue Peter and hours of digging in the school garden it would be a walk in the park. The most baffling thing for the majority of us though is what are all these flowers called?

For those of us (not me I hasten to add!) who have been schooled in Latin, using the scientific names for the plants is a reasonable way of identifying flowers – a good example is the Sunflower for which the Latin name is Helianthus. 

People Who Live in Green Houses

I’ll be honest here... until last year I had little, nay NO interest in houseplants. I always felt the idea of constraining plants in decorative pots and then subjecting them to completely unsuitable conditions – hot, dark corners with a bone-dry atmosphere – was completely against my gardening religion. 

The temptation to display tender and beautiful plants in trendy pots on the sideboard was not enough
to convert me into a houseplant fan and even the impressive array of houseplant goodies in shops like Ikea failed to seduce me.  However, now that I’m one of thousands of frustrated people who do not have a garden to call their own, I have reconsidered my stance and am currently creating a garden on the inside. I now even have Orchids blooming amongst my toothbrushes!