This month…

…is when we start to look forward to spring and are full of good intentions to finally spruce up the house and garden. In this issue, our home and style director Ben Kendrick (left) has curated an expert guide to refreshing the kitchen (page 70). He clocks up 21 years with us this year and reckons he’s shot hundreds of kitchens in that time. “In some ways, it is one of the easiest areas to style and photograph, as it’s a room people really invest in,” says Ben, who’s a keen cook himself. “But they can be tricky, too – lots of boxy shapes, or there’s a big island unit that’s inevitably just where you want to place the camera!” Meanwhile, our regular columnist Sara Ward (below, far left) is also busy setting her house in order – in this case, her beehive (page 30). “The bees have been huddling together throughout winter, and diseases can take hold if you don’t do a thorough spring clean,” says Sara, who will be joining us at our Fair in April to share more tips from her smallholding (for more details, see page 145). Finally, our features writer, Sarah Barratt (left), has been traversing the country to report on some of Britain’s quirkiest rural businesses. On page 84, she meets a mussel farmer in Cornwall and on page 60 she’s at Barter Books in Northumberland. Sarah, who runs our team book club, admitted recently that she’s given up her Kindle to return to printed versions. “Books, like magazines, are a wonderful way to escape,” she says. And, on that note, we hope you enjoy reading our stories wherever you are this month…

The Country Living team