Made to Last, and stylish too

Hot on the heels of my recent post - What a load of rubbish - comes another sustainable option, this time for furniture.  It's a company, Made to Last, which sets out to do things differently; not only are its products sustainable, they're also crafted here in Britain.

And what's more the products really do look great, and as the company name suggests, made to last.  Each product has clear guarantees displayed on the site, so you really can judge the true cost and value of a product.

No doubt like me you'll know that often items only last a short time and discover that no one seems to fix anything these days, so often the most economic solution is to buy more.  But that leaves items to get rid of more often, and more for landfill contributing to our throwaway society.

My top picks

1. Sofas by Wesley-Barrell

As you know we've recently been on the hunt for new sofas. We saw many and managed to choose two grey sofas (which arrived last week, more on those another day), but we quickly discovered that it's never just as easy as choosing a new sofa.  There are many shapes and sizes, prices and quality, but I do believe there's a sofa out there for everyone.

We saw many velvet sofas in our quest to replace ours, and we were very nearly tempted, but in truth the velvet sofas we saw weren't quite right.  As soon as I visited the Made to Last site the sofa below, by Oxfordshire-based Wesley-Barrell called out to me, and I wished the email inviting me to collaborate had arrived a few weeks earlier.

ONE OF THE WESLEY-BARRELL SOFAS ON THE MADE TO LAST SITE
Photo Credit: Made to Last

Each sofa is hand-built to order, which means as well as choosing the leg style and colour you can make alterations to the seat depth, so if you've little legs like MOH or I or longer legs then you can purchase a sofa that works for you.  While out sofa shopping we sat on quite a few we liked, but would have liked more if we could have reached the floor.

It struck me that they don't just claim to be eco-friendly but give clear examples of what they do everyday to demonstrate this in a practical way, such as using FSC accredited timber, using natural materials including a polymer fibre made from recycled plastic bottles.  It doesn't sound overly comfortable, but I'm sure it's much better than it sounds.

2. Black iron loaf tins by the Netherton Foundry

CAST IRON LOAF TINS ON THE MADE TO LAST SITE
Photo Credit: Made to Last

Yes, quite a change from my first item I know, but one that could make it into my bakeware cupboard.  Last year we tinkered with cooking bread in our pizza oven without a huge amount of success as the oven was still too hot.  However I'm a try-er so we're not giving up just yet.

These iron loaf tins are made of durable 99.1% pure iron with a sturdy brass rivet and are suitable for high temperatures and all ovens, including wood fired.  So with these I'd really have no excuse would I?

They're guaranteed for two years and it's recommended that you re-season it with a coating of flax oil, but full instructions are included.

If we didn't already have a long handled pizza peel, I might be tempted by one to match.  If loaf tins and pizza peels aren't for you, there's plenty more Netherton Foundry items to tempt you.  

3. Royal Sussex traditional garden trugs

Despite my modern tendencies, I also like some traditional items and the Royal Sussex trugs are very much in that category.  I've seen them at shows and spoken to the craftsmen that make them, completely by hand.  It's an item that can't be rushed and one that comes in several sizes, and even though we no longer have the allotment, actually especially now we don't have the plot I can see one in the garden to save me juggling the produce I pick in the months to come as I had back towards the house.  Although I'll admit that can be quite entertaining...

ROYAL SUSSEX TRADITIONAL GARDEN TRUG
Photo Credit: Made to Last

My top three is quite eclectic, but I'm sure you're not surprised by that by now - what would you choose?

* This is a collaborative post but all views are my own.

Towering vegetables

After yesterday’s plot update, I’m staying with veg for today’s post and I’ll freely admit to a little bit of veg envy, but buckets of admiration for this fantastic display of vegetables at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Not only are they expertly displayed, they look fantastic, don’t they?

 I was as mesmerised by the display as ever, along with the uniformity of the produce too. While I might be able to grow veg on the allotment, with more success than others in some of our choices, I’m not sure I’ll ever rival these, or display my beans like this!

And like all good displays there’s plenty to keep your eye entertained, the more I look at these photos the more I see. Like the vine tomatoes grown on the left of the picture above, the round yellow cucumbers that really do look like lemons (also the photo above, centre bottom) and the contrasting unruliness of the rebel red peppers (top right)

But there was veg in pots too, and pots really are a viable option for veg - in fact I’m contemplating keeping some tomatoes in pots, and in the greenhouse this year, rather than on the plot in an attempt to avoid blight. 

Everything just looked so vibrant, and well, edible. I hadn’t realised that this stall was the nursery that is “home to to the mammoth onion” or else I might have paid them more attention. 

Talking of tomatoes I was pleased to see a mix of known and new-to-me varieties, the naming of the variety “big green” did make me smile, because they were big and they were green - there was no hype in that name, was there?

Actually I do have a shot of some large onions. Compare those at the bottom of the pyramid to the tomatoes alongside them, and they are pretty large.

We’ve had success with beans on our plot, and long may that continue. This year we didn’t manage any broad beans, but seeing them at the bottom of the shot below, reminds me I should add some to my shopping list soon.

So, it’s not just flowers at the Chelsea Flower Show, there’s expertly displayed veg too providing a both a smile and the inspiration to get back over to our plot and start on that digging...

Highlights of my Chelsea (part 2)

In this second highlights post from my visit to the Chelsea Flower Show on Monday I'm sharing my highlights from inside the Great Pavilion (read part one to see my highlights from the show gardens, artisan gardens and the space to grow gardens).

The Great Pavilion is huge.  Two football pitches worth of flowery gorgeousness.  I started off with a methodical up and down each row approach and then got distracted and that plan went out of the window.  I *thought* I'd seen everything it had to offer, but I've since realised I didn't - not sure how, but I did see a lot...

One of the corners was dedicated to floral displays, there were floral thrones and floral arches, and there was a definite nod to the Royal Wedding.  I'll share more in a future post, but for now there's a close up of one of the arches, which also had a heart-shaped "window" built in.

ALLIUMS, AGAPANTHUS, TULIPS, ROSES AND MORE

THE HEART SHAPED 'WINDOW' WITH ADDED SUCCULENTS

There was the usual display of neatly arranged alliums, and instead of the more usual purple ones I thought I'd share this pale pink version.  Even looking at this picture I'm making a mental note to get more alliums for my own garden next year.

I think this floral horse and cart was one of the areas where my logical plan went awry - I was quite literally drawn to it, it's beautiful isn't it?

I'm a fan of the wire mesh type sculptures and the figures on this stand were fantastic.  The planting was evocative of a journey through a pretty meadow, and the smell here was fantastic.  As I've been editing my photos I've realised that a sure fire way of seeing just how much I liked a stand was by the number of photos I've taken, and I've a few of these, so you can expect to see more of this at a future date.

You knew there'd be cacti at some point didn't you?  And you're right a highlights post wouldn't be mine without some, these ones have the added bonus of having brightly coloured flowers too, so a double win in my books.

While we're talking bright colours, just look at the colour of this plant in the greenhouse, which I snuck myself into. The leaves have an almost waxy, succulent like look about them, but the flowers have a touch of asters about them don't they?  I'll be doing some detective work on this one I think.

Actually while we're on colour this Flower Market made me smile, as where else would you have blooms laid out to resemble veg (and with real veg there too)?

I mentioned in my first post that there was a fair bit of corten steel on show and in the Stihl inspired garden by Hillier Nurseries, there was more - and I'm really not complaining. 

I quite randomly appear to have chosen both sides of these pots for this post, but doesn't the blue of the ceanothus look great against the steel backdrop in the photo below? 

This iris, and those around it also caught my eye, isn't the colour exquisite?  Almost golden. I think I might need some irises in my garden at some point...

The planting at Chelsea is often dense and that's a style I love - I'm not keen on seeing earth between plants - I was pleased to spot these upturned, and crooked sleepers, and it reminded me that this was very much our preferred approach to our gabion basket area on one point, now though I can't imagine anything other than our quirkily filled wire baskets.

The Great Pavilion was also good for some celeb spotting, the lady of the left is Beverley Knight and she was a good sport trying out the Steel Drum, she admitted after the photos she had no idea but quite enjoyed herself. I bumped into her a few times around the show and the lady next to her was always with her.  I don't know who the man is on the end of the photo, but I did recognise the man with the medals.  Me being me had no idea of his name until later, it's Johnson Beharry who in 2005 was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in Iraq, and was the first living recipient of the award in thirty years.

He was, as you'd expect, super nice and I was proud to shake his hand and in fact he was one of the few people (or celebs) that I spoke to.  I also learnt later on that he was born in Grenada which explained why he was at the Grenada stand. I'm not a fan of the celebrity culture, and I do think that we should aspire and recognise people that achieve great things, rather than those that don't, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to the flower show.  As you can see I'm back at the greenhouse from earlier, but this time it's a much more refined affair, with greens and succulents for lunch, and a soft cushioned chair to sit on.

Actually the chairs reminded me of something similar from my 2015 visit - remember my Bumping into Alice in the Chelsea Wonderland post, if not pop over and have a look, it's definitely fairy tale.

I've a couple more photos to share in this post (and plenty more for a few other days) but I couldn't end without a peony shot, and not just any old peony shot, the colours of the petals here had me fascinated.

As did one of the clematis displays, there were wave after wave of clematis on these structures lapping at the beach.  It was a great way to display them and fun too, and yes you've guessed it there'll be more of these photos at some point too.

So there's my highlights in sixteen or so photos, I tell you narrowing it down took quite some doing!