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Valentine's Day gifts: please, no bins

Valentine's Day gifts should be person and flowers top the list. Eco friendly and biodegradable, they top the sustainability list too if they're grown in the UK

Hard craft: period house refurbishment by Daniel Hopwood

Interior architect practice Daniel Hopwood is based in London. He champions craftspeople to make his designs and works in a style to suit clients.

Egloo terracotta heaters

Egloo terracotta heater gives you a bit of warmth for the price of three tealights. It's eco friendly and useful

New: eco-friendly graphene paint

Graphene paint from Graphenstone is a paint that contains no plastics and is infused with graphene. it absorbs CO2 and in naturally microbe resistant

Rap for nature

 Deforestation is the second largest contributor to the climate crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change – warns that deforestation intensifies the effects of climate change, such as water scarcity, drought and food shortages. Billions of people will be adversely affected, especially those living in rural parts of the world who depend on farming to feed their families.

Villa Della Pergola English gardens at Alassio

Enjoy travel to Italy then don't miss the Gardens of Villa Della Pergola at Alassio on the Ligurian coast. So vibrant and green, nature is managed yet wild. Feel at one with beautiful gardens full of wisteria and agapanthus

Book review: Farmhouse Revival

Manhattan penthouses aren't everyone's cup of tea. Many of us would prefer the warmth and cosiness of an American farmhouse...with a big range cooker, Shaker furniture and handmade quilts on the feather beds... It's the US interior style equivalent to English country house, perhaps, and as with the latter, the former isn't as easy to achieve as it looks.

Hedging to combat traffic emissions

We know trees are good at absorbing CO2 but our town planners should plant hedges near roads too, say scientists. Researchers from Surrey University's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) looked at how three types of road-side planting – trees, hedges, and a combination of trees with hedges and shrubs – affected concentration levels of air pollution. The study used six roadside locations in Guildford as test sites, where the green infrastructure was between 1-2 metres away from the road.

Build a summer house in sunny Spain

'The house is located in an elevated residential area, which is dominated by the hillside that leads down to the sea,' explains architect Ramón Esteve. 'This view marked the direction that the walls would follow, in an abstract manner, defining the project,' 

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