With the demise of formal entertaining at home, a custom already on the wane because no one can be fussed any more and dealt a death blow by the global financial crisis, homeowners need to find a use for the dedicated dining room.
It’s a rather undistinguished looking climbing cactus from South America but it has one of the strangest and most beautiful flowers known.
City dwellers have become so inured to noise that they don’t even notice it any more. We awake to the sound of garbage trucks roaring by, bottles for recycling being tipped into bins at six in the morning and the scream of sirens.
This has been a great summer for frangipanis. Specimens in areas where this rewarding flowering tree flourishes have put forth sumptuous flower heads and it seems that there is now a greater variety of colours than ever before.
Consider the humble hippeastrum, better known in Australia as the ‘hippie’ but more romantically and correctly described as amaryllis. They were found in many Australian gardens of the 1920’s and 30’s, the flowers usually white striped with pink.
Legendary British gardening guru, the late Christopher Lloyd, once shocked his colleagues by tearing out most of the roses at Great Dixter, his famous and justly admired Sussex garden, and replacing them with cannas.
In an interview in Vanity Fair, John Richardson, author of the magisterial four-volume study of Picasso (three published, the fourth still to come) observed that the thing he loathed most about modern living was the scented candle.
It comes as something of a surprise, after following the signposts to Lachlan to happen upon one of the most seductive and sophisticated cooking schools in the country.
India. It’s the new influence in decoration. Tired of years of minimalism, of black and white and grey and beige, adventurous homemakers are breaking out with lashings of colour and pattern.
Lovers of antique Australian cedar furniture are spoiled for choice in the coming months. No fewer than three major sales in Tasmania feature some fine examples of colonial craftsmanship.
They’re calling it The New Classicism. It was inevitable that designers would sooner or later abandon the ubiquitous and impersonal minimalist look and opt for something a tad more romantic.
One of the most beautiful plants to have in the garden around Christmas is the lilium. Not the short Asiatic hybrid varieties but the majestic Oriental varieties.
The trouble with Spring is that it’s over too soon. It arrives with a rush of blossom and bulb.
Balls. They’re the newest thing in garden decoration. Long a feature of British gardens, they are now beginning to appear in Australia.
Pimentos - aka peppers or capsicums - are readily available in Australian specialist markets. but no one seems to have cottoned on to the most delicious variety of all, Pimientos de Padron.
While the market for antique furniture is soft, there seems to be no shortage of buyers willing to pay substantial prices for good examples of colonial cedar.
Cranford, the television series based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, is the finest example to date of the period costume drama often referred to as the ‘bonnets and bustles’ genre.
For years the vegetable patch was something to be hidden away behind the shed or the garage, its utilitarian function seemingly at odds with the concept of the colourful flower garden.
The drought that currently afflicts many parts of Australia will break sooner or later, but a permanent consequence will be a greater emphasis on plants that require minimal amounts of water.
A chandelier is typically a branched, decorative ceiling-mounted light fitting hung with clear crystal drops, right? Wrong.
Most people know primulas as bedding plants with flowers in a pretty limited range of colours, usually white, pink and mauve, borne on long stems and most often used to create a massed spring bedding effect.
Keen rose lovers will have noticed a trend evident in this year’s catalogues which have been tumbling into our letterboxes for the past month. Alongside all the old favourites – the beautiful David Austin roses, the flash new hybrids and the new generation of Iceberg roses – are some amazing new striped varieties.
The names are wonderful. Mouse’s Back, Elephant Breath, Cat’s Paw, Lamp Room Grey, Ointment Pink, Smoked Trout, Calamine, Cooking Apple Green, Matchstick and Radicchio.
The name is Guiseppe Arnaldo and Son, which is a bit of a mouthful, but in true Australian fashion it’s been shorthanded to GAS.