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Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Lemon heaven
Penelope Maguire celebrates the bright flavours citrus brings us in our darker seasons. I think I write about citrus around this time every year — but how could I not? With the darkening afternoons and the pull to lean into heartier, more comforting meals, citrus arrives like nature's sweet little reminder that brightness still exists, even on the greyest days. Lemons, oranges, mandarins and limes do more than just brighten a dish — their sharp acidity and aromatic oils cut through the richness of winter meals, making them a perfect seasonal pairing. I don't think that's a coincidence. Our digestion is closely tied to our circadian rhythms and, in winter, with shorter days and less natural light, everything tends to slow down — digestion included. Hormonal shifts, darker evenings, and disrupted meal timing can all make our digestive systems feel a little more sluggish. This is where lemons really shine. Traditionally used to support digestion and liver function, they can stimulate gastric juices, encourage bile production (essential for breaking down fats), and ease the heaviness that follows a rich meal. They're also high in vitamin C and flavonoids — antioxidants that support vitality, immunity, and the liver's natural detoxification processes. And yes — I realise the irony of following that with dessert recipes. But sometimes, especially in the darker months, a little sweetness is medicine too. This month, I'm sharing two of my favourite lemony recipes: a delicate Lavender & Lemon Posset, served in hollowed lemon halves, and a lush Lemon, Lemon Verbena & Boysenberry Cake with a fluffy cream cheese icing and swirls of lemon curd. The lavender and lemon verbena are optional — so don't let their absence stop you from making these — but if you've got a lemon verbena still hanging on in the garden, now's the perfect time to use it. Enjoy! Lavender and lemon posset A delicate, vintage-style dessert that feels light and elegant, served in its own pretty lemon shell. It's quick to make, beautiful on the table, and a perfect creamy, sweet and acidic finish to a winter meal. Ideally, you'll want to use culinary or English lavender ( Lavandula angustifolia ) for this — it's usually available dried from herb stores, or you might find some in your own garden. If you only have the more common French lavender ( Lavandula dentata ), that's OK too — just use a lighter hand, as its flavour is a little more camphorous. One or two whole flowerheads will be plenty. Ingredients 2 cups cream ¾ cup sugar Zest of 1 lemon 4 large lemons (you'll need ½ cup juice, and the shells for serving) ½ tsp dried culinary lavender (or 1 tsp fresh) Method 1. Slice lemons in half lengthways and juice them (you'll need ½ cup of juice). Carefully scoop out the pulp using a small serrated knife and spoon. Trim the bases so they sit flat. Chill in the fridge while you make the posset. 2. In a small pot, combine cream, sugar, lemon zest, and lavender. Bring to a gentle simmer and let it bubble softly for 5 minutes to thicken. 3. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice until fully combined. Strain out the zest and lavender. 4. Pour the warm posset into the lemon halves using a small jug or spoon. Chill for at least 4 hours or overnight. 5. Serve cold, topped with a tiny pinch of dried lavender or edible petals. Lemon, lemon verbena and boysenberry cake This cake is a showstopper for midwinter celebrations and it makes the most of lemons in every part: cake, syrup, icing and curd. Yes, it takes a little time, but on a winter weekend, what better way to spend the day? Serves up to 12 Ingredients • 200g butter, softened • 225g caster sugar • 4 large eggs • Zest of 1 lemon • 2 Tbsp finely chopped lemon verbena (optional) • 2 tsp vanilla extract • 120g gluten-free flour • 1½ tsp baking powder • ½ tsp salt • 160g ground almonds Lemon syrup • Zest and juice of 2 lemons • 75g sugar • 1 sprig lemon verbena or lemon balm (optional) Method 1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Butter and line a 20-23cm round springform tin. 2. In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat the sugar, lemon zest and lemon verbena to release their oils. 3. Add the soft butter and vanilla and beat until pale and fluffy. 4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl between additions. 5. Gently fold in the flour, baking powder, salt and ground almonds until just combined. 6. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. 7. While the cake bakes, gently heat the syrup ingredients until the sugar dissolves. 8. While the cake is still warm, prick all over and spoon over the syrup. Let cool completely before icing. To finish Frost the cooled cake with the cream cheese icing. Spoon lemon curd over the top and scatter with edible flowers, herbs or dried lemon pieces. Cream cheese and boysenberry icing Ingredients • 125g (½ a tub) cream cheese, softened • 125g butter, softened • 2½ cups icing sugar, sifted • ½ cup boysenberries, drained • Pinch salt Method Beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add icing sugar and beat until fluffy. Fold in the boysenberries — swirl for a marbled effect, or mix in fully for a vibrant pink icing. Lemon and lemon verbena curd Ingredients • 3 egg yolks • ½ cup sugar • Zest and juice of 2 lemons • 2 tsp lemon verbena, finely chopped (optional) • 75g cold butter, cubed Method Whisk yolks, sugar, zest, juice and verbena in a small pot. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Reduce the heat and stir in butter till it melts into the curd. Strain for a smoother finish. Chill before using.
Tom's Guide
21-05-2025
- General
- Tom's Guide
How to attract bees to your backyard — 7 pollinator-friendly plants to grow now
The gentle hum of bees visiting your backyard isn't just a pleasant soundtrack, it's essential for both your plants and our planet. With bee populations facing serious decline worldwide — like the rusty-patched bumblebee that is now endangered — your backyard can can play a small but meaningful role in helping them recover. By choosing the right blooms, you're building a vital habitat for bees to feed and thrive. And, as an added bonus, you're also bringing wonderful color and life to your garden. You don't need a huge space or complicated setup, just the right mix of flowers. These bee-friendly plants are a simple way to encourage more pollinators to visit and do what they do best. Here the best seven to plant to attract more bees into your backyard. Lavender is a favorite in pollinator gardens for a good reason: bees absolutely love it. This hardy plant, originally from the Mediterranean, produces purple flowers that are especially easy for bees to spot. Lavender is also a great choice for gardeners. It grows well in poor soil, needs little water once established, and its silvery-green leaves add color and texture even when it's not blooming. You can plant it along paths, in containers, or as a low hedge to attract bees all summer. For the best results, go with English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), which is known for producing plenty of nectar. Just make sure it gets full sun and has well-drained soil. Lavender doesn't like sitting in water. Few plants make a more dramatic statement in the garden than the cheerful, towering sunflower. What many gardeners don't realize is that these summer giants are actually composite flowers. Each "sunflower" contains hundreds of tiny individual blooms, offering a veritable buffet of nectar and pollen for visiting bees. While the classic giant varieties create stunning focal points, don't overlook multi-branching varieties like Autumn Beauty or Italian White that produce dozens of smaller blooms over a longer period. This extended flowering season means more food for bees throughout the summer and into fall. Sunlowers are ridiculously easy to grow from seed, making them perfect for gardeners of all skill levels (and a fantastic project with kids). Plant them along fences, as a seasonal privacy screen, or scattered throughout your vegetable garden to boost pollination of your edible crops. Vincent's Choice is a sunflower variety that grows well even without long hours of sunlight, unlike many traditional types. It reaches about 5 feet tall and produces big, golden-yellow blooms with deep brown centers. Foxgloves add height and color to any garden with their tall spikes of tubular flowers that bees love. Bumblebees are especially drawn to these bell-shaped blooms and often disappear inside them, emerging covered in pollen like tiny miners returning from a golden cave. These plants, which naturally grow at woodland edges, can reach up to 5 feet tall when in bloom. Foxgloves are biennials, meaning they flower in their second year, set seed, and then die — but they often reseed themselves, so you'll see them come back year after year. The speckled patterns inside each flower help guide bees to the nectar. Plant foxgloves in spots with morning sun or partial shade, and let them spread. For nonstop blooms, plant new ones each year so you always have some in flower. If you're looking for a truly foolproof bee magnet, catmint deserves the top spot on your planting list. This aromatic perennial offers an intoxicating combination of grey-green foliage and lavender-blue flower spikes that bees find irresistible. What makes catmint especially valuable is its marathon blooming period. With proper deadheading, it provides nectar from late spring through autumn. Trim it back after the first flush of flowers fades, and you'll be rewarded with a second (and often third) wave of blooms. Varieties like Walker's Low and Purrsian Blue create gorgeous, drought-tolerant mounds that work beautifully as informal borders, container specimens, or planted en masse. If sunflowers are the cheerful giants of summer, heleniums are their fiery autumn cousins. Commonly known as Sneezeweed, these North American natives produce daisy-like blooms in vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds from late summer into fall. The domed centers of helenium flowers are particularly rich in pollen and nectar, creating landing pads where bees can feast and socialize. Varieties like Moerheim Beauty and Mardi Gras create spectacular shows of color while supporting dozens of bee species. Plant heleniums in full sun and reasonably moist soil for best results, and deadhead regularly to extend the blooming period. Their upright habit makes them perfect for the middle or back of perennial borders, where they'll provide weeks of fiery color and buzzing activity. These gardening gloves provide an excellent grip and have a comfortable fit around the wrist, plus they are breathable and machine washable and available in three sizes. They are perfect when you need a medium-duty gloves that provides dexterity. Plus, they come in a pack of two. Hardy geraniums (not to be confused with the annual pelargoniums often sold as "geraniums") are the quiet workhorses of the pollinator garden. Their open-faced blooms in shades of pink, purple, blue, and white provide easy access to nectar, making them particularly attractive to bumblebees and solitary bees. What makes geraniums exceptional is their adaptability, there's a variety for nearly every garden condition. Hardy geraniums spread to form dense, bee-friendly carpets of color that suppress weeds and soften garden edges. Many varieties bloom for months rather than weeks, and their deeply cut foliage remains attractive even when not in flower. Plant them beneath roses, around shrubs, or as ground cover in difficult spots — wherever they grow, bees will follow. Marigolds bring both beauty and functionality to bee gardens with their bright yellow, orange, and red blooms that shine from late spring until frost. Their open, daisy-like flower structure makes it easy for bees to land and access nectar, while their distinct fragrance helps pollinators locate them from a distance. Beyond attracting bees, these versatile annuals also serve as natural pest deterrents. Marigolds are incredibly simple to grow from seed or transplants, thriving in everything from containers to border plantings with minimal care. For the most bee activity, choose single-flowered varieties rather than heavily doubled types, as these provide easier access to pollen and nectar. Plant marigolds in your garden and your vegetable patch if you have one, to boost both pollination and pest protection in one colorful package. Now you've learned how to attract more bees into your backyard, why not take a look at our other useful gardening guides? If you want more hummingbirds to visit you, check out these 7 tips for attracting them to your yard. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. And for more gardening hacks, don't miss 3 ways to use banana peels in the garden and 7 ways to care for your spring bulbs after they've flowered.
Telegraph
27-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
How to grow lavender and the best varieties to plant now
Lavender creates its own summer heat haze and the flowers attract bees and butterflies galore, because aromatic plants produce nectar that's packed with a concentrated mixture of sugars. This mainly Mediterranean subshrub has been grown here since Roman times, although it does need a sunny site and good drainage. Once established, lavenders are drought-tolerant, but they do need watering after planting because they rely on developing deep root systems. That can take a growing season, so it's always best to plant them in spring and early summer, if possible. Gardeners get confused about when and how to prune them and that depends on hardiness and flowering times, so it's sensible to subdivide them into these three groups. English or true lavender Lavandula angustifolia These shorter, upright lavenders are the hardiest of all and they will survive cold winters in well-drained positions. They have grey-green narrow foliage and blunt-topped, fragrant cylindrical flowers in lilacs and purples in midsummer. They make perfect hedging and edging plants and they can live for 20 years if they're pruned every year. Cut them back to 9in (22cm) after flowering in early to mid-August. This encourages new growth within weeks and protects them over winter. If you fail to prune them, they will become leggy and die. English lavenders to try 'Hidcote' AGM Deep-purple flowers, held above grey foliage, make this one the eye-catching choice for hedging. Found at the National Trust's Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire, it was probably planted by the garden's creator Lawrence Johnston and it's thought that he brought it back from France in the 1920s. 20in/50cm. 'Beechwood Blue' AGM Another 1920s lavender, this one from William Wood's Beechwood Nurseries in Buckinghamshire. It's a compact mound-former with masses of deep violet-blue flowers held above grey-green foliage. As it is less upright, it forms an informal hedge. 24in/60cm. 'Ashdown Forest' A paler, later-flowering lavender with mid-violet flowers held above greener foliage. Discovered in the 1980s, in a garden at Nutley in East Sussex, it's a perfect hedging lavender in a softer shade. 20in/50cm. 'Folgate' AGM A bushy and bluer lavender, with a touch of the Aegean Sea, and the flowers are enhanced by sage-green foliage. Named after a long-gone Norfolk nursery. Norfolk Lavender has the correct plant and it's a stunner once evening light descends. 24in/60cm. 'Melissa Lilac' This produces a soft haze of paler lavender flowers, with larger florets than normal, and woollier foliage. It was launched by the Downderry Nursery at Chelsea 2003, whose owners described it as 'a real marshmallow'. I staggered away with a very large potful at the Chelsea sell-off that year. 28in/70cm. Growing tips for L. angustifolia: If you want to dry the flowers, pick them during early July and hang them upside down. Hard pruning encourages new growth – just look for the new shoots at the base and cut back to those. You can delay flowering by trimming back half the plant in April or May. Lavandins Lavandula x intermedia These are hybrids between hardy English lavenders, L. angustifolia, and the less-hardy spike lavenders, L. latifolia. Lavandins can survive down to -10C in well-drained soil, but they need a gentler pruning regime because they're not as hardy as English lavender. You can shape them in September, by just cutting into the foliage, or you can prune them in spring by going back to the new shoots nearer the base. They can last 10 years or more when correctly pruned, but eventually they lose vigour and develop ugly woody legs. These effusive billowing plants have slender tapering flowers, held on radiating stems, so they are best grown as single specimens because many are a little too floppy and expansive for hedging. New ones are cropping up, because lavandins are grown commercially for their oil. In the garden, lavandins provide good winter silhouettes and they can be shaped into roundels. Lavandins to try 'Grosso' This is widely grown commercially in the fields of Provence and the UK, for its camphorous oil. 'Grosso' is unique due to having bright-green foliage and deep-purple flowers, so it's not as soft on the eye as some. It was discovered by farmer Pierre Grosso in 1972 and yields lots of oil. 3x3ft/90x90cm. 'Phenomenal' A newer earlier flowering lavandin with stronger stems topped by violet-blue spikes held above silvery foliage. Hardier than many. 30x30in/75x75cm. 'Heavenly Scent' Raised from a new British breeding programme for commercial oil production, this is highly aromatic, with slender lilac-to-mid-blue flowers held above a dome of sage-green foliage. Fragrant and aromatic. 20x28in/50x70cm. 'Sussex' (syn. Arabian Night') AGM This New Zealand-bred variety has the longest flowers of any lavandin, so it creates a haze of lilac-purple flowers above mid-green foliage. 36x42in/90x110cm. 'Seal' Raised in Kent in 1935, this bushy, more erect blue-purple lavandin has notable grey-green foliage and it's vigorous. 39x48in/100x120cm. Growing tips for lavandins: Lavandins need space, because they form rounded plants that are often wider than they are tall. Prune more lightly, especially if the foliage is grey and woolly. Frost-tender lavenders for warm sites Frost-tender lavenders are shorter lived and less hardy, so they should only be tidied up and deadheaded, rather than pruned. They demand good drainage and a warm site and they are only hardy to -5C. The most effective ones have tufted 'ears' held above fat flower spikes, and these vary between a punk haircut and Isadora Duncan's flowing scarf. They tend to be pricier than other lavenders, but you do get three months of flower from May until August. Many of them are bred in New Zealand. Frost-tender lavenders to try 'Flaming Purple' This was raised at Downderry Nursery in Kent, which is no longer trading, but still has an informative website. Long purple ears rise above a dark oval head. 30in/75cm. 'Regal Splendour' Introduced from New Zealand in 2001 by Patrick Fairweather, this has dark flowers with paler purple 'ears' and the foliage is grey-green. 28in/70cm. 'Willow Vale' This stunning Australian plant, introduced in 1994, has three pinkish-purple 'ears' that fan outwards above a dark, almost black flower head. 30in/75cm. Growing tips for frost-tender lavenders: Frost-tender lavenders with ears detest wet winters, so drainage is key. Only plant between April and June. They can be grown in coastal areas and in containers. Tidy and remove the faded flowers before winter sets in.
Miami Herald
20-02-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
Grab this bottle of Majestic Pure Lavender Essential Oil for 40% off
We might earn a commission if you make a purchase through one of the links. The McClatchy Commerce Content team, which is independent from our newsroom, oversees this content. Name a more calming scent than lavender — I'll wait. Known for its stress relieving properties, lavender essential oil has been a long-standing staple in aromatherapy and massage therapy. Some people like to add it to their baths for a relaxing effect, and others enjoy using it in soaps, lotions, shampoos and other personal care products. However you like to use it, you can score a 4-ounce bottle of Majestic Pure lavender essential oil for a sweet deal on Amazon right now. Amazon Made of 100% natural oils, this steam-distilled, therapeutic-grade lavender essential oil is a blend of Lavandula angustifolia from Bulgaria and Lavandula hybrida from France. It comes in an amber bottle with a glass dropper for easy application. To use this oil, simply add three to five drops to a diffuser or humidifier for a soothing and refreshing scent. If you're applying it to your skin, you'll need to dilute it with a carrier oil first, such as coconut or avocado oil. To do this, combine five to 10 drops of the Majestic Pure lavender oil with the carrier oil of your choice at a 2% dilution. You'll also want to test for any allergic reactions before applying this oil to large areas of your body. Start by rubbing a small amount of it on the inside of your elbow, and discontinue use if any irritation occurs. This Majestic Pure essential oil has over 112,000 five-star ratings on Amazon, along with over 21,000 glowing customer reviews. 'This is now on my 'favorite things' list,' says one reviewer. 'The scent actually lasts, a little goes a long way, and the price point is right on. I add it to a small misting bottle with water and spray my linens before bed.' Another reviewer touted this lavender oil as the 'perfect little gift,' and another mentioned that it's 'awesome for massaging.' So, if you enjoy the calming, floral scent of lavender, grab this Majestic Pure Lavender Essential Oil while it's on sale for 40% off and enjoy the incoming relaxation!
