Latest news with #WhatsAppGroups
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
The best online nurseries to transform your garden without leaving home
It feels almost illicit to admit this, but for the past few months I've been in two very useful WhatsApp groups that exist to serve people who live in a certain corner of London interested in home improvement and gardening. I've come to find the patter of insight and community feeling around matters such as leftover boxes of tiles and how to solve a kitchen island conundrum strangely calming. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It took me years to visit famous historic gardens such as Great Dixter and Sissinghurst – my love affair with gardening started with the well-tended window boxes on south London housing estates and the unruly front garden roses that you can smell from the pavement. Ordinary, not-enough-time, don't-know-the-Latin-name gardening is my jam, and there's plenty of it to be enjoyed in the group. Plus, the other day someone asked a question that I thought it worth sharing here: where to buy plants if you don't have a car and live in a city? Both apply to me. For the first few years of my gardening adventure, I would travel to local nurseries and carry cardboard crates home on the bus or back of my bike. These days, I make a couple of jaunts a year to one particular stall on Columbia Road flower market in east London for interesting perennials. I've not bought a single plant this year – I divided a lot of trusty perennials in the autumn, and they've filled up the beds instead. But when I am wanting to fill a bed or a tub or a micropond, I go online. Mail-order plant nurseries used to satisfy the avid gardener's retail therapy needs, and the same is true now, only on the internet. There are specialist nurseries for whatever you may want: peat-free perennials from Penlan Perennials (I especially like their shade offerings and ferns); foxgloves and hollyhocks from The Botanic Nursery; always-amazing peat-free varieties from Beth Chatto, whose site allows you to filter by situation and colour (their packaging and customer service is great, too). I get that it can seem intimidating – clinical, even – to buy living things on the internet, and it's important that you're around to give the plants a good drink when they arrive. But once you get into buying plants online it can totally shape your gardening. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion You can buy young plants in 9cm pots, for instance, which are cheaper and will grow better than the already-flowering more mature specimens on show at the garden centre. It's also easier to stick to your colour scheme or planting plan. Newsletters and catalogues will remind you when to get into the seasonal habits of care and maintenance, and you'll be introduced to all manner of plants you never knew existed. Plus, less time carting plants on buses means more time enjoying them in your garden.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Confession time: I am a Newcastle fan who wants Sunderland promoted
I am a Newcastle United season-ticket holder, and I want Sunderland to win the Championship play-off final. There you go; I said it. Two seemingly mutually exclusive states of being and mind rolled into one funky, highly improbable sentence. I can hear your best John McEnroe impressions from my keyboard. You think I am either a) yanking your chain, or b) … well, there is no b). I cannot be serious, right? No self-respecting Newcastle fan could wish anything but a hundred lifetimes of infinite doom on the Mackems. Except that I am deadly serious, and typing the words brings not a lick of shame or guilt. I know a Wearside promotion party is sub-optimal. Immediately post Dan Ballard's added-time-in-extra-time semi-final winner, I carried out a scientific and objective survey of the various Newcastle-based WhatsApp groups in which I lurk. The consensus? Largely what you would expect of emotionally irrational football supporters when it comes to their nearest and (not so) dearest. Let them crash and burn. Throw open the gates to Netflix and record every breathing moment of a slide into Northern League oblivion. Let their masses of empty seats continue to pinken in the sunlight. Re-sign Jack Rodwell on nothing short of six figures a week. Expletives may have been used. I can relate to all of those sentiments, but they are not overriding for me. Perhaps I am naive though, as others holding my view were few and far between. However, I miss the Tyne-Wear derbies – properly miss them – and all that comes with them. That night, while those down the road basked in Ballard-based euphoria, I suggested via WhatsApp that to shy away from those games was cowardice, and I stand by that now. True, I am too young to bear the scars of May 1990's Division Two play-off semi-final defeat over two legs, and for some the anguish of those four days still feels recent. But come on. Get over it. #OnThisDay in 1990: @NUFC 0-2 @SunderlandAFC ⚽️ @marco_ten #SAFC | #HawayTheLads — Roker Report (@RokerReport) May 16, 2025 To clarify: I will celebrate not one jot if Sunderland beat Sheffield United at Wembley. My late grandma, the sweetest of Christian ladies who spent her life in Wallsend and Morpeth, may have wished success upon both the region's biggest sides, but that is not me. I will swerve the media coverage of any Sunderland triumph with the same rigour as Trent Alexander-Arnold avoiding Liverpool city centre. But the evil is necessary. The alternative is playing Sheffield United, home and away. Two perfectly respectable fixtures against a perfectly respectable team. But also, with no disrespect to Sheffield United, meh. Those games will draw little to no attention, measuring on the anticipation scales somewhere between the cricket club's AGM and a chippy tea. Sure, I will probably watch and, hopefully, enjoy. But chances are they will live short in the memory. The derby on the other hand … yes, please. Who doesn't want a stomach-twisting week of nerves topped with 90 minutes of lunchtime agony? Twice. For the first time since 2016, it's the TYNE-WEAR DERBY. Sunderland vs. Newcastle. A game of football which is so much more than just a game of football. ❤️🖤 📹 Two Tribes/BBC — Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) January 6, 2024 How I long for those away days, the mandated stupid-o'clock arrival on Barrack Road to jump on conspicuously yellow buses for the slow 15-mile trudge down the A184. I yearn to be held back after the final whistle for a disproportionate amount of time because grown adults cannot act their age. Yes, there is only ecstasy or agony, bragging rights or absolute despair. But my word, what a way to feel alive. If you are a football fan and don't want such occasions, what on earth are you in it for? Take the risk and earn the reward. It is nearly a decade since Newcastle and Sunderland met in the league. During that period, we have had to find contentment in a one-sided FA Cup victory on Wearside last January. They rolled out the red carpet for us that day. Imagine being in the meeting at which club executives waved through Newcastle's request to decorate the Black Cats Bar in zebra print. I cannot hide from the fact that the two clubs look very different to how they did during that 1-1 draw on Tyneside in March 2016. Although United were relegated two months later, ownership and expectation has since changed massively. What was once even sparring – albeit Sunderland did win six derbies on the trot pre-2016 – has been replaced by an expectation that black and white will dominate red and white. For Newcastle, it is perceivably a no-win scenario. Either business as expected or an embarrassing dropping of points. Except that is not how rivalry operates. Victories will be just as sugary; defeats as sour as they come. So yes, I am still a Newcastle United season-ticket holder, and I still want Sunderland to win the play-off final.
