Kylie Minogue Dear Donny
Like us, celebs are staying home due to lockdown, so we’re delving into the fashion archives…
She is everyone’s favourite Aussie pop princess and has been in the spotlight for more than three decades, selling millions of albums and hoovering up awards, including an OBE from the Queen.
Now 52, Kylie is still at the top of her game. Just last year, she managed to record an album, Disco, in lockdown, and topped the charts with it, making her the first female artist to have a number one album in the UK in five separate decades.
Style-wise the petite singer has reinvented her look time and time again and the former Neighbours star has come a long way from mechanic Charlene’s overalls and bubble perm.
Her tour costumes are created by the likes of Dolce & Gabbana and Jean Paul Gaultier, while off stage she favours designers such as Givenchy, Stella McCartney and Valentino.
However, her most famous item of clothing will forever be the teeny pair of gold hot pants she wore in the Spinning Around video in 2000, which her stylist picked up for 50p in a charity shop.
We should be so lucky to have a wardrobe like Kylie’s. With these high street lookalikes, you can.
Q
I’m moving into a place that has very dark wall colours and I‘d like to paint them all white. What do you suggest I use?
Julie Cross, by email
A
Buy a good-quality product, such as Crown pure brilliant white emulsion. Give the walls a quick sand to remove any dust and dirt – try sugar soap for grease and nicotine. Use a good make of roller, such as Purdy, a medium pile roller sleeve, a roller pole and a good 2in brush. Give the walls three full coats of emulsion.
Q
My conservatory, which has 1m of brick around it, is always cold and suffers from condensation. There is a radiator on one wall. Any advice? S Pope, by email
A
Conservatories are often too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Using them in the winter as a dwelling room is going to cause condensation on the cold surface. Your best bet is to put insulated plasterboard on the brickwork.
Most people go all-out to make their garden a delightful sight, but meanwhile scent, sound, touch and taste are often lucky to get a look-in.
But a scheme that delivers something special to stimulate all five senses boosts the underlying oomph of your garden no end.
And it can make a small space seem larger by adding an extra dimension – turning even the briefest trip outside into an instant open-air aromatherapy and walkthrough spa session.
You don’t have to create a whole new garden from scratch – just slot sensory plants and features into your existing layout. But don’t simply scatter them around any old way. Think of the way you arrange harmonising colours and contrasting shapes, sizes and textures so they don’t fight when you’re trying to create a pleasing view. That’s the approach to take with other sensory ingredients. Plan your scheme so you take a journey round the garden.
Scented plants are some of the easiest to misuse. Where a lot of people go wrong is to collect a great assortment of scented plants, shove the lot in one place and call it a scented garden. But that’s like throwing the contents of your store cupboard into a saucepan and calling it stew. Make each scent stand out by giving it a bit of breathing space. If you have roses in a mixed bed, don’t grow other scented flowers
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Make each scent stand out by giving it breathing space
LEMONY Verbena not just a cookery herb
underneath them - use your lavenders to line the path to your next feature and save jasmine to grow over the pergola or gazebo, where you can sit and enjoy undiluted fragrance.
There are two sorts of scents, and you need some of each. Scented flowers are great when in bloom, but for longer-lasting fragrance you need plants with scented leaves. The fragrance only leaks out when the leaves are bruised, so grow them somewhere you’ll brush past the plants.
Pelargonium offers a good spectrum of scents. There are lemon, orange, peppermint and pine varieties as well as various spices. Herbs are great fragrance plants as well as for use in cookery, especially rosemary, lemonscented verbena and mint.
Strategically speaking, the places to concentrate your scents are in containers by your front and back doors, on your patio and in beds underneath the window you open in summer, where you’ll gain the most benefit. Sound hardly figures on most people’s list of must-have garden features. Wind chimes have fallen into the irritating bracket and outdoor stereo systems must count as anti-social – unless you live miles from the neighbours.
But have you noticed the soothing effects of gently running water? A rippling fountain in a quiet corner with a seat and some
FELT SO GOOD Herbal Lambs Ear
scented plants are the ideal ingredients for therapeutic wind-down sessions on summer evenings after work.
Most water features operate by recycling a small amount, so you needn’t worry about wastage.
Rustling grasses, such as bamboos and the taller ornamental miscanthus, are one of today’s highly desirable, natural sound effects – and, of course, don’t forget birdsong. Encourage birds to drop in by feeding them and providing drinking water and baths. As a bonus, their activities are gripping viewing – better than any TV soap.
Touch is probably not something you often do to plants, but next time you are in a nursery or garden centre, take a look around.
There are plants with soft and silky leaves (stachys byzantina), felty foliage (purple sage and some artemisia species) and tough mound-shaped rock plants, such as saxifrages, whipcord hebes and some sempervivums, which are a joy to pat.