Homes & Gardens

Germans are the most capable, the Turkish are the least confident and the French are the champions at spending… on DIY. What about the UK and Ireland? We are the keenest gardeners.

Our Continental neighbours are discovering the joys of "do it yourself" and, at home or in the garden, are going at it hammer and nail, thus feeding changes across the Eurozone in home improvement, according to a recent European Home Report by Kingfisher, owner of B&Q, the UK’s largest home improvement retailer.

Modern Europeans are, at last, following in the footsteps of the UK, where...

The UK’s largest garden centre retailer, B&Q, expects to sell over 150,000 Poinsettias this Christmas as the most popular houseplant makes its annual Christmas debut.

Indigenous to Mexico and Central America, this plant is now a Christmas staple for many UK homeowners. Over 100 million Poinsettias are sold every year throughout Europe, but what many people are not aware of is exactly how the plant gets its famous crimson colour.

The secret... shading the plants in darkness for 50 days. Growers begin in May, six months before they go on sale, to grow the plants and to...

With all the floods the South West is experiencing at the moment, The Exeter Daily turned to The Royal Horticultural Society for a bit of advice on how to resurrect your garden once the flooding has subsided.

Few garden plants will survive waterlogging or flooding. Prolonged periods of sitting in ground saturated with water causes yellow leaves, root rot and death. However, conditions can be improved using various techniques to promote drainage and prevent damage.

Soils become waterlogged when water builds up, unable to drain away. This leaves no air...

Staff at Exeter based Integrity (Europe) Ltd, were thrilled to learn that one of its clients, Oreck, cleaned up at the 2012 House Beautiful awards with the gold medal for Best Cleaning Product being awarded to its XL Graphite upright vacuum.

One of the newest models in Oreck’s renowned upright collection, the XL Graphite swept away stiff competition to win the award. Extremely light at 4.15kg, it is less than half the weight of most uprights. Using only 350 watts of power, significantly less than the standard 1,400 – 2,000 watts, XL Graphite is eco-friendly as well as cost...