Sexy garden chair

Yesterday I was on a garden tip. Today I still am... and just wanted to share this Ikea Högsten garden chair.

It costs £79. I think it is most elegant. What do you think?

Garden before & after

Does anyone else suffer from DIY guilt? I had a bad dose of it yesterday: it doesn't matter how much I do, it feels like nothing ever gets finished. 

So to remind myself how far I've come, and because it's all springlike out there today, I dug out some pictures of how my garden was when I moved in, and some pictures of how it looks now (or how it did last summer, when it was tidy... ha ha). I'll be posting up some more rooms as I get my photo filing in order. For now, here's the garden BEFORE...

(Yes, that is a gnome wearing a fig leaf, middle right. I kinda regret losing him...). The flowerbed went the whole way down the left hand side of the garden, making it feel oddly claustrophobic. And there were sooo many colours going on. So, anyway, this is what the garden looked like after a bit of hard graft: decking where the sunniest spot is, for a bit of lounging (on Ikea chairs); a bit less flowerbed and some more private fencing (which was very hard to find in that style; in the end I got 6ft x 6ft panels intended for vertical use, and turned them on their side as I preferred the way they looked with horizontal lines).

Sadly, I managed to kill the gorgeous giant fuschia bush you can see in the top image, above, on the far right. But I planted a new flower-bed on the right side; put a fragrant star jasmine against the fence; planted a big jungly thing – the one poking out from behind the shed – that withstands all weather (gardening isn't my forte); put up a shed (OK, thanks Dad, he did that bit); had a suspended concrete bench built against the house wall, which gets the sun in the morning, and replaced the gnomes, which went to a good home, at my granny's, with a beautiful wooden heron I bought on holiday years ago in Brazil.

An improvement, I think... though it still needs work. Oops, must stop that.

Inspiration from the tropics

Happy sunny Sunday – and sorry for the recent silence. I've been lucky enough to be on holiday in hot, tropical far-off places.

But now I'm back in Blighty, to gorgeous (not to mention tan-sustaining) weather, feeling refreshed, renewed and full of inspiration.

While I was away, I revived my obsession with tropical foliage and am determined to get as much of it as is possible in a semi-shady London garden. Sadly, my quest for the gorgeously fragrant frangipani trees of my dreams has been fruitless, and I fear the search for exotic plants suitable for the southern hemisphere is going to be tough (though when I've spoken to some clever garden-y friends and got their tips, I'll share them). It's a small start, but I'm very happy with the mini magnolia tree I planted in the winter, which has sprung into life during our recent mini heatwave. I searched hard for one that didn't need a proper flower bed and lots of growing space, as I only had a big pot on offer – and if you, like my friend Giles, are also keen on a magnolia that you can grow in a container for a balcony, patio or front doorstep, check out this miniature pink beauty from Van Meuwen, which costs just £17.95 and grows to a manageable 150cm.

Meanwhile, here are some nice jungle-y, planty, flowery things you don't even need a garden for...

1. Cotton Kaveri bedding, designed by artist Rebekah Maysles, who was inspired by a trip to the south of India. Anthropologie, from £38

2. This luscious Green Flower Oilcloth, is one of the new designs at Viva La Frida. Big, bold flowers (the largest white flower measures 20cm square), and just £12 per square metre. Use it as a tablecloth to bring the tropics into your kitchen, or stretch it like a canvas and hang it on a wall. I think it'd look great in a bathroom.

3. This pretty vintage garden print, from The OK Corral is far from tropical – instead it's packed with bluebells. Very English. And very lovely. The artist is Beatrice Parsons (1860-1955) and this 24.5cm x 32cm painting, in its original wooden frame, is a snip at just £12.

4. Good old B&Q. I really like this environmentally friendly wallpaper, which is printed on 100% FSC paper using water based inks. It'd look lovely livening up a wall in a hall or along a staircase, I think. Best of all, it's just £12.98 per 10m roll. (And look out for this wallpaper in next Sunday's green-themed Insider column in the New Review. This week's, in case you're interested, is all about how to pimp your stairs.)

I'm a little bit obsessed with birds (might have to do a gallery of pictures of the vast number I seem to have accumulated in my house... perhaps another day). So it's no surprise that I'm rather taken with these endearing stone birds from Cocoboat. They cost £132 for the whole family but only £32 for the little quail on his own (10cm high). Not bargain basement prices but not expensive, especially considering that they're stone, so should last forever, and that each bird is handmade to order in Devon made "by Tony and Doreen". Aww. I like that.

Dunce's guide to gardening

Homebase TV presenter: charisma-free but helpful

Hurrah! I'm loving the new Homebase guides to gardening - a series of 40 videos, designed for novice gardeners (like me) who might need to have words like "chitting" explained to them (see the guide to growing potatoes).

Once you get over the slightly annoying voice and lack of screen charisma that the presenter has, his kindly back-to-basics approach is brilliantly helpful - and perfectly-timed. I'm warming up to the idea of opening the back door again, to get my gardening gloves dirty.

Admittedly, there isn't much gardening to do in a small, paved and decked rectangle - but I've dabbled with a raised bed vegetable patch, created a new flower bed (but not got as far as planting more than two things in it), and allowed a reckless gardener to kill the once-expansive passion flower climber. I'll post up some before (ie, now) photos soon - I need all the advice I can get...