The Ins & Outs - Grasses For Shade & Arches In The Home

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Jojo talks us through how to colour a tricky North facing baby room and Polly helps us with planting grasses for full shade.We discuss the general rules for putting rugs on carpets and Polly drops a bake off bombshell!Plus, Jojo has a special treat for all our Innies & Outies!Grasses for full shade from Polly - Melica uniflora albida, Hackonecla, Dechampsia cespitosa, Calamargostis brachytrina and Karl Forster. Or fill shade - Luzula nivea.InstagramPodcast - @the_insandouts_Jojo - @houseninedesignPolly - @pollyanna_wilkinsonProducer Andy - @andy_rowe_WebsitesJojo - https://www.housenine.co.uk/Polly - https://www.pollyannawilkinson.com/Pod Rowe Productions - https://www.podrowe.net/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Green, the colour of true elation Pine on a summer's day See I've been waiting for you, waiting for you Welcome to this week's In's and Out's with myself, Jojo Barrow, and the very lovely Pollyanna Wilkinson. We've got a jam-packed episode this week. We're talking about Polly's Bake Off, Birthday bonanzas, Mr Big is out in the wild, we're back talking about loose, grass is for shade, we've got rugs on carpets and I've got a very special treat for you innies and outies. So let's jump on in. Hello my love, how are you? Hello mate,

I'm well, how are you? Catch me up. Can I just have a real moan a sec please about the hay fever right now? Because I've never had pollen allergies like I have this year and it's making me feel like when I wake up in the morning I've done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. I look like I've been punched in the face when I wake up in the morning and I've got really like dry skin around my eyes like red the pollen is it's not affecting any it's not affecting my airways or anything it's affecting my eyes I don't know if anyone else is feeling

that right now but my god it's really aggressive it's brutal isn't it you must how do you do it when you're in the garden all the time do you build up like an intolerance no I mean it's all my little ones are really suffering with it as well but actually you know how I love the TikTok and there is a woman on it who is consistently stinging herself with nettles because apparently that builds up a tolerance to hay fever well people say you're supposed to work at it for like months before the actual season comes in so even in like the year the year before you're meant to start like taking the honey and eating local wildflowers and stuff like that or you can't do that you know from

the year before I think you've got to build up an intolerance to over the course of time before the actual the season starts don't you I think so although listeners don't go stinging yourself with nettles no don't do that please no not advised um it's definitely quite it's it's really I definitely feel like this year it's really quite aggressive. I don't know why. So that's my first number. That's my first moan. What's your second?

My second moan, as I'm looking on square in the fucking eyeballs, is flies. What flies? I don't know. Is it just me or are there more flies around this year too? Big, nasty, black, helicopter- size flies that just kind of whiz around laying eggs all over the cat's food really just i find them so disturbing i find flies more disturbing than anything actually i just don't like them and they really gross me out right okay give it to me what else have we got what else you annoyed about let's get it all off

your chest hay fever and flies that's just that's it we've got one of those electric um fly swats it's called the it's called the exterminator and you press this button as you hit the fly and it goes please any animal like please don't come at me saying that's cruelty to flies i won't have that i'm sorry flies no no i literally will save spiders and pop them out the window of the flies they can have it in my opinion anyway that's my loan um apart from that my love I um I have I've it's both my little girl's birthdays this week as you know my zigrock ziggy and rocky were born zigrock so ziggy and rocky were we actually not doing zigrock this year I've got too much on but Ziggy and Rocky were born two years and one day apart so I went into labor with Rocky on the morning of Ziggy's birthday

because I was two weeks and one day late with both of my girls oh mate that is brutal both times both times but I loved being pregnant though I loved it that's the pregnancy of an elephant isn't it I think it's maybe because I'm so tall i can carry them for longer but but both of mine are went for 42 weeks and a day is that how it works your height depends on your i don't know on your gestation like a giraffe yeah i just enjoyed being pregnant i loved it i was that weird person i was like oh yeah more excited than any anyway so and they're born they've got their birthdays one day apart which in some ways is great but now because they're sort of the age difference where we're four and six they want to have separate birthdays so ziggy's now like i don't have a

birthday with rocky i want to do my own thing i'm a big girl she's a baby i'm the big girl so now they've been literally this week has been all about these after school parties and trying to get my head around things and partying arrangements and all sorts of things. It's these kind of pieces of admin which just absolutely destroy your life though, isn't it? Because it's like just normal parenting and working all good. But then you throw in a birthday party and it's just that pushes me over the edge. We're doing one this weekend as well for my big boy. Oh, has he got a birthday? When's your big boy birthday?

Got a birthday next week, so we've got the party this weekend. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's quite full on organising birthday parties for kids. Let me just hop in and apologise for the drill because, as we all know by now, go through a renovation and they're drilling something drilling something's a hell of a lot today i know apologies guys um yeah it's actually do you know i wanted to be that mom i don't know about you paul but i really wanted to be that mom that did like lovely little organic um little

party fillers in their little party bags like you know i don't know but like little bee bombs or something i don't know like pollen but i always i wanted to do some fun stuff of course like it comes to it and you're like fuck oh my god it's a plastic cake i can't i mean i'm not a mum that has time to bake cakes and stuff i would love to be i was gonna ask you this have you ever have you ever been a cake baking birthday mum no we i think through COVID we made an awful lot of cupcakes and lots of banana bread, but that's about as far as it goes on the baking front for me. One day, maybe when I have a new kitchen

and the kids are a little bit older and they can bake with me, but right now I just don't have time. You can't have it all. You can't do it all. I'm just not a baking mum. No. And also, you know what? There's some great cakes out there.

And they do it way better than me. great there's some great cakes out there and they do way better than me i always used to make cakes for my boys because have we talked about my stint almost on the bake-off we must have covered this no we haven't covered this poll tell me i need to know this tell us so actually do you know it was when I was retraining to be a garden designer so when Raph was born and um at the time I submitted to be in the Great British Bake Off and I got all the way through to the final 20 uh and yeah I did all of the rounds which were absolutely fascinating and I got through to the test kitchens I was in there with Liam who has done great things since you know Liam young the young kid Gallagher yes Liam Gallagher and I were on the bake-off

together you you would be in that pile now I think you'd actually be on celebrity bake-off now maybe we should put you in for celebrity bake-off oh do you know what it was an excruciating experience though because you sit waiting for these phone calls to see whether you're through four months anyway got I got to the final people and then didn't get through to the to the tv but you know thank goodness for that or I wouldn't be the garden designer I am today I think you should I think you should reapply one day it'd be so cool do you know I couldn't do it it was so stressful and when you go to the test kitchen so I went um you do you have to do lots of bakes at home that you bring in and they judge them and you have to do lots of interviews. And then the final thing is you go to this sort of city kitchen and do like a corporate city kitchen where people clearly go for like lessons and things. And I had to make a chocolate and orange cake, but they don't give you any machinery.

So you've got to, I think it had a generally sponge or whatever, but you had to, you had to whisk whisk it with your hand which was quite tough if it's a really foamy sponge anyway and you have to share an oven which any good baker will know is an absolute nightmare because if you put a cake in the oven golden rule you don't open the door once the cake is in until it's ready because it can sink but you have to share an oven so you have this really tricky thing where you put yours in but unless and i didn't put mine in at the same time as my fellow oven so mine sunk it looked like it had a crater in it oh right I mean honestly pal I I'm slightly in awe of people that bake oh just chefs in general because I think that getting even remembering the quantities that's required of like flour to sugar to butter to how much you should whisk it how much you should turn it how much you like all those things I couldn't even begin I don't even know where to start like I

you could though mate if you did it for a living it's like me and my Latin names my plants or you and the like paint colors I think you just you just learn it right I suppose you don't know yeah well it somewhat ruined my love of baking actually because I really really wanted it and then didn't get through so then I sort of stopped baking so I haven't actually made my little boy's birthday cakes in several years as much as anything because they're getting quite complicated now where do you get your where do you get the cakes from then I get them from this amazing um cake baker called Sainsbury's mine's called Asta and then I tend to like buy a decoration from Etsy or something to make it sort of whatever they want you know if they want it to be football themed I'll to like buy a decoration from Etsy or something to make it sort of themed to whatever they want. You know, if they want it to be football themed, I'll be like, I will buy some goals and shove it on the cake.

Do you know what? I was going to do that this year. And then I thought, no, I'm going to step it up and use a local baker. Because at least getting a cake from a local cake shop, I thought was doing a bit more for like local business. So I've done that. But just like you, I'm just going to whack some like animals on top that you get from Etsy. Jobs are good. They don't also, they're like you, I'm just going to whack some animals on top that you get from Etsy. Jobs are good. And they don't, also, they're so little, they don't really, I have to say, Ziggy's a real, she's quite particular about things. She was like, Mummy, you can't tell me what my cake is,

but I want, it has to be this, this, this, this, and I love animals, lots of animals. And I was like, well, come on, you're sort of writing a little list here. Mine sounds easier, I've just got football cake, and I'm like, I'm fairly sure I can buy one of them off the shelf. Yeah. Yeah. I think you should start baking again, pal,

with all that spare time you've got. Do you know what? I'm really excited. When the kitchen is finished, I actually was saying to Mr Big last night, I'm really looking forward to having a kitchen. Because actually, as many listeners won't know, there's been a bit of a journey for me

where I've moved house twice in a year. So I've sort of felt a bit like I've not settled anywhere and a bit of a nomad. And now I don't really have a house, I've got a shell. So I'm really looking forward to actually having a kitchen of my own and then I can bake, which I used to do all the time. That was my hobby. Yeah. Can I just rewind there a second because there was a mention of somebody there and I think it was Mr Big. I think we've unleashed him to the world now.

He's been hard launched, hasn't he? He's been hard. There was a hard launch in a reel, in an actual reel we saw his face. In a sodden top like Mr Darcy. He's absolutely soaked. Mr Darcy. Sorry, Mr Big.

Welcome to the world. He's very tall, hence the name. Yes. And something. Anyway. And something. Anyway. Stop it. Stop it. Right.

I know where you're going with that. Now, I've got two other bits of news. The first bit is, I don't know if anyone that doesn't knows this, I'm an avid Pilates fan. I love Pilates. When I was living in London three and a half years ago, I used to go to, I used to do a lot of reformer Pilates, you know, the one with the machine with like all the weights. I loved it. But since moving out of here, I haven't found anywhere decent to do it. I'm quite frankly having a hard time. So I do a lot of mat Pilates. And I think when you do Pilates, when you're just following something online, you become really quite, maybe you become a bit lazy and you don't really put the effort in. you become really quite maybe you become a bit lazy and you don't really put the effort in so I never really used to get a bit of the old butt burn and the arm burn all those things that you probably should but I was like I'm doing my bit I'm doing you know I'm doing a bit of movement I went to a class the other day and I'm going to give her a shout out actually she's called

Chloe's Pilates and she's got an online thing and I did this class with her I couldn't sit on the loo for three days without like oh and you know when you have to go off the loo i love that feeling oh i love do you know how much it was right in that sort of that bit right in your rib cage there it's like where it knits so painful for about three four days she was that's when you know it's worked good oh my god she but she corrected everything i was doing wrong so So I have to say, if you're a real avid just do it on a mat at home, I think it's so important to get in front of an actual teacher. But she was brilliant. Oh, my God.

Go and check her out. Amazing. I took myself on a fart walk last night, actually. Tell me about that. Did you fart? Well, of course I did. I'll tell you why, because I went to... What did you eat?

I took... Because Rocky because Rocky oh it's such a busy day so I have to tell you and actually I was going to drop this in later because I've got a little code for my lovers out there um I did a photo shoot yesterday I was I was modeling for my brand the tea store which I'm so excited to show you and I'm going to drop that in at the very end of the podcast I'll talk to you about it later but okay after the shoot I got home I had to show you on I'm going to drop that in at the very end of the podcast I'll talk to you about it later but okay after the shoot I got home I had a couple of meetings and I had to take my little one Rocky to her nursery art exhibition which was the cutest thing because you can imagine it's just screwed up balls of clay with like a sticker on or something and they'd done this proper little exhibition it was so sweet and um and I took the girls to took the girls to five guys afterwards five guys burgers

which is so good for five guys burgers and fries and um i scoffed the most unbelievably delicious cheese like all this like shoved full of every single topping you can get in their burger and inhaled a sort of thing of cajun fries and you And you know, when you get home, you're like, I actually can't sit down. I'm so stuffed. So I put the kids to bed far too late, about nine o'clock. And then I went for a walk. I went for a walk around the block

for a fart walk on my own. And I tell you, it was lovely. It's good. And then I slept like a dream. So anyone that's not fart walking, you should really give it a go. Can I just clarify? Because I've never done a fart walk.

Does it make you fart? Yeah, the idea is that it moves. It't make you fart it moves it gets things moving around your intestines so instead of just eating and letting it just sit in there it's just a 10 minute walk after you eat and just gets things moving and then i think it helps with your indigestion and your blood pressure and things like that well good on you it's been a busy week for you hasn't it pal it's been a busy week can you catch me't it, pal? It's been a busy week. Can you catch me up, my love? I feel like I've hopped on far too much about flies and hay fever and bum burn. I've been back at work, and do you know what? We had one glorious day, on the hottest day of the year, 29 degrees I think it was,

where we were setting out plants. Now, I would say this is not a time when we normally plant gardens, but we set out 4,000 plants. We didn't do all of them, but as many as we could. Wow, that's a lot could wow and it was absolutely boiling but much like you and your pilates by the end of that because essentially you're squatting to pick up plants moving into where they go squatting to the down again i could not move by the end of that day i was a broken sweaty mess and i should have jumped in their swimming pool

i don't know how you do it i don't think i could be a gardener it does my back in it's a real yeah it's tough on the back isn't it what else have i got for you it's been um renovation ups and downs ups and downs i'd say we are at now we're at the point now where things it is looking great but we're also at the time when you start seeing things that you didn't plan or things coming up and you have to make decisions and compromises. And, yeah, I'm still enjoying it, but I would say that it's definitely, I am understanding the sort of stress levels of being like,

quick, you have to make a decision today about this thing because everyone's coming tomorrow and you're like, ugh. Do you know one of my favourite, favourite clients is when they come to me it's me sorry that's exactly what i was going to say end of full stop yeah what i was going to say is one of my favorite things is when clients come to us and they say i've done it before i've done a renovation before on my own. And that's why I know that I now need help. That's when I... So when we get first time renovators and they're coming to us for help,

they haven't experienced what it's like and therefore there's not a real understanding of the time perhaps involved and what our job actually entails because there is so many layers of detail and work involved in designing a house to within an inch of this life and getting it right and then you've got so many components and so many moving parts and so many people involved there's a huge amount of people management as well and delivering

information and the right thing being built and as you said mistakes suddenly or not mistakes but things popping up that you weren't prepared for didn't know would happen unforeseen things which comes up in builds outside and and in you can't predict everything you can't predict it no so i think when a client comes along and says i actually really need your help now because i've done it before and i'm never doing it again it's really really hard then i yeah i like those clients and tell me about can i just understand what's going on with your arch in the kitchen do we want to tell people about this this sort of arch oh yes i've got really beautiful arches going in and um builders done beautiful job everything's to plan and the the brickwork had finished and they look spectacular and then the roof's gone in and the roof has gone in way lower than i thought

it would uh and that's entirely my fault for not sort of interpreting the plans or paying enough attention. But suddenly it was like, oh no, the arches are really close to the ceiling. These are the sorts of things which it's sort of, you just can't expect till they come in. As it happens, it's an intended aesthetic and it'll be absolutely fine.

It's really interesting being the client here because on the one hand, I must be an absolute nightmare because as a designer, anything other than good design is unacceptable. So if looks wrong it's like no that's bad design that that doesn't look right but on the other hand as a designer I'm very aware we need to pivot we need to just find solutions there is no point being bolshy about things just like right what's the answer what can we do can we do this can we do this let's move on so I imagine I'm a dream and

a nightmare combined um arches are a really interesting thing because I think when people see arches and they see these beautiful pinterest images or projects that we've done with arches they think oh my god I really want one of those and the amount of houses I go to where people say can I get an arch in here now if you've got standard ceiling height of say 2.4 meters 2.3 meters an arch isn't going to be a true arch so when we say a true arch that means literally you sort of imagine you're going all the way up and over it's almost what we call like a squashed arch the arch at the top has to be squashed down so you're not going to get that like really true arch shape if you do that if you think where the

arch finishes and then your straight walls start that's going to be really really low so your head height is going to be restricted when going through the door and this is why we have to say to people sometimes you can't have an arch unless you like that squash top arch so it's um and sometimes it just doesn't look right and actually you have to look at the architecture of a house to think does an arch work it doesn't always work it's not i know i put you might think i put arches in everywhere i go but i really don't you have to be quite considered about where they're going to go about how they're going to look yeah i mean these these are looking dreamy i can't wait to get the the glazing in the black thin for my glazing oh it's going to be stunning should we

dive into some questions we've got a lot i think we should do some questions my love that was a lovely little catch-up with you i I've got a question from Sian. I am expecting my first baby, a little girl, in September. And as a lifetime pink lover, I want to paint the nursery pink. But I hate anything sugary and too girly. But also rather bored and uninspired by setting plaster et al. I've every colour chart going and currently sat with them surrounding my ever-growing bump, feeling very overwhelmed.

It's a north-facing room with a beautiful original Victorian fireplace and high ceilings, and I have a gorgeous dark wood wavy bobbin vintage chest of drawers. Oh, this sounds dreamy. And caught an oatmeal carpet. I don't want it looking too twee and stuffy. Hashtag baby brain. P.S. Love the pod. I've learnt so much.

First off, congratulations. Oh, new babies i just get so excited when i hear people having babies and doing nurseries and things how lovely um right sean so i heard two things here being one was that you have a north facing room and you want pink so you've got to be really careful with the color like setting plaster no setting plaster in a north-facing room it's going to end up looking because it has a sort of mauve grey undertone in a north-facing room that's going to get no natural light and therefore no warmth from the sun it's going to feel really it's going to start to feel really cold and a bit sludgy okay you're going to need to go with

the pink and this is why tester pots are absolutely essential get this tester pots up on all four walls to see how it's going to look you're going to need to go with a pink with a bit of fun in it so anything that you think a pink might feel like it might be a bit playful and a bit fun but you need something what's going to feel like it's got a bit of life to it in that north facing room so you almost want a pink with a little bit of a sort of yellow undertone steer clear of any pink with gray or mauve in it like just step away from it it's going to feel really a bit depressing so you want to go a little bit fun get samples up actually do you know what i say get paint pots and get samples up on your wall but i'm going to

point you in the direction of coat because as you know we love coat coat paints have these brilliant stickable like removable paint samples and therefore you can move it from wall to wall you can peel it off stick it on the wall peel it off stick it on another wall and they have about five different pink shades in their library and one is called persipan something like persipan might be quite nice i think you just want to try get a few and try them on the wall. But just make sure the pink has almost a bit of a sort of warm undertone to it. Because that's going to really help elevate the room when you walk in. So we're talking like pink, the colour of the sky at night.

With a little sunset moment as opposed to like grey. Exactly, Paul. And actually, leaning into that that pink and yellow is such a beautiful combination for a little one's room you can then add little hints of blue so you know little sort of blush sort of blush pink lovely sort of soft um soft sort of warm yellows and then little stripes little like stripes are lovely because you then want to bring in something like kind of a white to help brighten i think also don't forget when you do a kids room and you paint the thing you know paint the whole room it can feel really

insipid but once you start putting all the toys in there and the furniture and pictures go on the walls suddenly everything connects and then it makes sense but just like i said be considerate it sounds like a beautiful room we've got lovely, be considerate. It sounds like a beautiful room. We've got lovely high ceilings and it sounds like a spectacular room, but it is north-facing. So just go with colours that are warm. Get that warmth in there. Yes.

Okay, Juju, I've just got another question for you. This is from a really important questioner. This question is from Polly Wilkinson. Oh, hi, Polly. And the question is, is from um polly wilkinson oh hi polly and the question is can i decorate my downstairs loo in the theme of taylor swift and it's not not like a taylor swift wallpaper but like snakes on the wall can can we do that i think this is going to be what something that's going to be carved into my gravestone it's going to be if there's one place you can have fun it's in a downstairs loo okay i'm gonna that if there's one place you can have

fun it's in a downstairs loo i think i love it when you go into a house and everything's quite sort of calm and cool and then you go into the downstairs loo and it's so unexpected and it's like what is this you're like hello honey you can have your shrine in your tailor shrine and you can just sit in there. I don't want it to be a shrine, but I think actually I've never had my own place without a man's input. And actually I could be like,

no, actually I want snake wallpaper. I think we should do it. My tailor loo. You could even have like a little, you know, sort of ceiling speaker that when someone walks in, it just starts playing Taylor. That'd be good. Every time someone goes into the Lou.

And then I want a massive print that says, look what you made me do. Oh, in neon. That's actually quite good. Speaking of Taylor, a little nudge there. Oh my God. Memory bank. Oh God, I did that.

How did I forget that? That's the best thing of the year, let alone of the week. Good Lord. I even forgot that. Oh, my God, what a concert. Tell me. What a concert. Dude, it was so good.

She was incredible. Do you know what? Watching her, I just thought, I do not understand this woman. So the concert was three hours, 45. Plus, we obviously got there early to get a good spot so we watched all the paramour as well this woman non-stop dancing singing three hours 40 my feet were in agony and i was wearing the comfiest trainers i could think of by the end of it i was like oh i'm quite tired now how she is doing that she is a

machine she hasn't got she hasn't got kids that's why gosh we've digressed off the questions there sorry back in back in let's get back in the garden oh i like this one polly um this is from sarah i love grasses but to have a shady garden are there any grasses that can handle shade yeah there's loads um actually, some that you'll think are for full sun actually can handle quite a lot of shade. So, right, my favourite grass for part shade, and it's quite hard to get hold of, particularly around Chelsea, so never try and buy it around May, would be Melica unifora albeda.

And you all saw that at Chelsea a lot. Ula, who won Best in Shows, she had it in her garden. And it's this very airy little grass green and it's got little tiny white um clusters at the end it looks like dew drops and that is beautiful sort of in a woodlandy scheme uh my all-favorite hack and clover macro can take quite a lot of shade sort of part shade just as long as it's sort of a well-drained damp soil but then also you've got things like Deschampsia sespitosa or Calamagrostis brachytrina and Calamagrostis carforster they can all take part shade remember part shade is that sort of three to six hours of sunlight a day or if we're talking full

shade then your best bet is something like a Lazula nivia and I'm conscious I've just said a load of latin names at you so i think it's probably best we put that on our insta stories and in the show notes but so there are loads of different ones but actually a lot of grasses could handle quite a lot of shade and good for you for using them that's a good one because i do love grasses i love the i love the wispy wispy nature of them all right we've got a question from beck dear polly and jojo firstly thank you providing the most, hilarious and downright practical podcast I think there ever was. And Jojo, I think maybe that should be our new tagline.

Oh my gosh, I'm in. I get so excited when I see there's a new episode in my Spotify. I do have an innie question for Jojo. I have a god-awful downstairs loo that we're about to update. She might want to decorate it like Taylor Swift. Yes. First things first, though, we need a new window in here issue is you can see the top of the window aligns with the ceiling and so we've no way of getting around this from a budget perspective luring it would

cost a fortune it seems my question is once we've got the new more traditional non-pvc window in how would you dress it would a cafe curtain look weird or should we let the window just be we live in a Victorian house and this was originally a doorway, judging from the outside. I think you're both brilliant and as a fellow business owner and mum, I think you're both incredibly inspirational.

Oh, stop it. Best wishes, Bec. Thank you so much, Bec. I would suggest here then that you dress your window with a cafe curtain, but instead of having a half-height cafe curtain, don't be afraid to take it top to bottom. I know this might sound funny,

but have a little rod at the very top inside your recess and a little rod at the bottom. And then essentially have your lovely ruched cafe curtain inside your recess. And that will help draw your eye up because you want to kind of almost detract from the fact that it's meeting the ceiling. So, yeah, you can. I wouldn't worry about I wouldn't worry about that.

It's not going to look weird, but I think that that that cafe curtain is really going to help your eye draw up. So little you can get them in. You can get them in antique brass or polished brass or even chrome. I don't know what fittings you've got in there, but your little rod at the bottom, little rod at the top, and then a lovely ruched kaffir curtain that goes all the way up. And then you can always move it to one side. You can actually split kaffir curtains, by the way, guys.

Don't feel like it has to go all the way across. You can have it in two pieces that you can create a little light in the middle if you want, so you can sort of pull them open and closed. All right, my love. I'm just here in the kitchen. I'm making myself a gin and tonic and I'm coming out to the garden.

Would you like one? Lovely. Yes, always. Okay, good. Extra, extra slice. Right, this one's from Grit to Green. What combo do you like for back of a sunny border? Just simple as that, simples. What combo do you like for back of a sunny border, Paul? It depends a little bit on what the back of the border is,

because if it's a hedge as a back, I would do something quite different to if it was a fence. And it also depends on the depth of the border. But let's put my pedantry away and say, plants I like to use at the back of the border. Eupatorium is a brilliant perennial. It's really tall and it's got fluffy flower heads that the butterflies love them, which is lovely.

And it sort of flowers later in the summer and in autumn. So I like it because it's sort of bringing something new to the party at Borda. I also love Verona Castrum, which, I mean, there's loads of them out there, but Verona Castrum, Erica is lovely. And so is Lavendel term, but probably the most popular,

the one you'll see designers use the most is probably Veronica Astrum Fascination, which is quite a deep purple. And what it is, it's a really tall spiking plant that has a very, very narrow spike at the top, and very tall, probably the height of two metres or so, sways in the breeze, but flowers for ages. Again, it's coming into flower about now.

So it's a good July plant. And then also, if I was going to go for one more, probably my old favourite would be agastache, which I love, the taller version of the agastache, which you can get in whites or in purples. I like black adder and blue fortune. Those are great. And finally, I've not talked about this one before,

I do love a cardoon or an artichoke at the back of a bourgeois. They're lovely silvery leaf and very decorative seed heads which you can leave up over winter. Great for the birds as well. So there's a few for you. One last one for you, madam. This is from Tilly. What are the rules with putting a rug over a carpet in a bedroom?

General rules for rugs on carpets, I would say it's totally fine to do it. Adding a rug to a plain carpet, especially in quite a big room or under a bed or something, can actually add visual interest, which is what we want to do. It's what we do with interiors but i'd say my rule of thumb is that adding a patterned rug onto a plain carpet is lovely but i wouldn't put a patterned rug on a patterned carpet not that i assume many people have patterned carpets these days but if it's a nice plain rug then a plain carpet then add a nice patterned rug other rule rule of thumb, I would say, is just ensure tonally all the colours in the rug work with the carpet.

So if your carpet is grey, don't put down a rug that has oatmeal tones in it. There's all oatmeal that has red, you know, sort of burnt rusty reds or something. It's going to look, that's going to look really wrong. So you're going to have to work with the colour of your carpet as the undertone for the color of your rug and that will help marry the two okay Paul I'm going to do one more quick one for you this is from Xena um I love English cottage garden style me too but also love tropical like big ferns tree ferns how do you mix them I mean this is a great question and this is okay I heard a fascinating description of garden design the other day from a fellow designer much

of garden design is explaining to clients what they can't have and for me I think one of the principles of garden design is choosing your style and sticking with it where gardens can look really jarring is when you try and mix those styles so that is why we're going back to Beth Chateau right plant right place would you find a tree fern in a cottage garden planting style no you wouldn't you'd find a tree fern in a woodland scheme somewhere shadier amongst other shade lovers so if you've got a shady spot, then you could obviously go with your tree ferns and things like that. And then you have your cottage garden elsewhere. But the trick is you can't have everything. And that's when we're doing planting plans. One of the things we have to do is sort of rein the clients in. You can't have every single

plant you love. They don't all work together. So the slightly disappointing answer is don't put them all together it'll look weird own your style so if you're going to do cottage garden in your main garden then lean into that you can go modern cottage garden which is where you would add in more grasses so it's more of a matrix style but you can't just go whacking a tropical plant in with roses it would look absolutely nuts so you have to designate zones if you really if you're a real plant in with roses it would look absolutely nuts so you have to designate zones if you really if you're a real plant lover and you want all sorts of different things then you have to divide your garden into it and have like the white garden or the tropical garden or the

cottage garden and they have to be in clear areas or it will look just like a weird pick and mix yeah good tip i think in general with with any form of design, interior or exterior, I think you have to pick your style and slightly stick with it. And I think you can definitely tiptoe into different styles and bring in, like, for instance, in the interior, you can bring in a bit of mid-century when you might have sort of a bit of English country. And I love that. But one has to lead the other. So it's almost like one has to be the predominant in quite a large way.

And then you can include little bits and bobs. You'll quickly see, like if you stuck a fern in a country garden, you'd probably straight away be like, I don't think that's working. I think it's working. It also belongs in shade. So instantly, shade planting has a very different feel for it. It feels more woodland edge or it might feel more rainforest. So pick your styles.

But I'll talk more about that in future, actually the space on that but i think that's quite enough questions for this week my darling let's i think that's plenty thank you so much for all the questions as always sorry we don't ever get through that many we get far too busy mattering all right pal come on then what is in what is out what's in this week for me which i'm so excited about and really proud is that uh by the time this episode comes out the tea store my clothing brand will be back up fully stocked brand new shiny website and i'm really excited straight like mildly nervous um but for all our inies and outies i'm going to give you a discount code a 15 discount code which is ins and outs that'll give you 15 off at checkout on www.thedestalk.com congrats dude

can't wait to see it so out for me is is football oh my gosh yes when it was never in do you know what one of the one of the joys of being divorced i i don't like football as we well know and and the builders came in the other day and they're like right we're off big game tonight and i was like oh is there a tournament on or something they were like yeah it's the is it what is it is it the euros premier league i know at the Euros? Premier League? I know England are playing something. Is it Euro? I don't know. I think it's Euros. I don't know and I don't care and it's lovely.

It's just not a feature of my life. It's not lovely though, is it? Well, it's lovely because I don't, I mean, my little boys like it and talk about it sporadically here, but not really, not a lot. But I had no idea. I was just blissfully unaware that there was a football competition so yes that's my out is is football not because I

don't support England I fully do I very much hope they win their sporting game however um not in my house Paul let's just leave this with one more thing to do and it's obviously for you to grovel but I think because um i i think it would only be right if you sung to our inies and aunties just sing how much they should like subscribe and review and maybe in a in a taylor swift song i don't know about you but you should like and subscribe too it'll be all right if you leave us a review. Can I hear it again? Just one more time.

Okay. No, we're going to need to get my lyrics right. Okay, go. I don't know about you, but you should like us too. And even better, you should leave us a review. I can't sing. But, look. Bravo. should leave us a review. I can't sing. But look.

Bravo. I can't sing. I've never pretended I can. And if you don't now go and like and subscribe and review and share with all your Swifties and mum and whoever else then I think that's doing a deep disservice to our friend Polly. Then I shall die of shame.