Whatever the weather, the Easter weekend always brings a smile to our faces because it’s the time we really start to notice the garden ramping up. All those months lying dormant and then – as if by magic and almost without warning – the first leaves unfurl, the blossom appears in the blink of an eye and the garden suddenly becomes ALIVE. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Black Friday tomorrow and the high street is once again gearing up for a retail frenzy.
If that’s all a bit much, the antidote might well be to take a ‘slower’ approach to gift buying and seek out some smaller, artisanal producers. In the UK we have a thriving entrepreneurial sector and some very talented people producing some really wonderful things. Read the rest of this entry »
OK, so we know that as you’re reading this there’s probably a pretty good chance you already have a lot of respect for the bees in this world, but it can never hurt to remind ourselves why they’re so important – and fascinating. Read the rest of this entry »
Rudyard Kipling once said, ‘Gardens are not made by singing “Oh how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade’. It’s true, of course but come August, a lot of the hard work has been done in the garden and, save for the ever-ongoing task of weeding and deadheading, it’s a month to really enjoy the spoils of all that labour. Read the rest of this entry »
Isn’t it lovely to be in the midst of summer? The long evenings, gardens in full bloom and the bees happily buzzing… Even if you haven’t managed to get completely on top of your garden, patio or balcony, there’s still some time to inject a bit of colour before the summer’s out…
When you say ‘bee’ chances are most of us immediately think of honey or the almost-cuddly bumble bee, but in fact the world of our favourite pollinators is considerably more diverse. There is just one species of honeybee, 27 known bumblebee types, yet more than 250 different species of other, solitary bees, of which the Red Mason bee is one. Read the rest of this entry »
When we started beepalace, one of the statistics that we found truly mind-boggling was that it can take around 20,000 honey bees to pollinate an acre of apple orchard but just 250 solitary bees. Isn’t that amazing? Read the rest of this entry »
An exciting new research project launches in the first week of April, which aims to gather more information about our bumblebees by inviting volunteers to conduct short 5 minute surveys in their gardens, much as the RSPB do with their annual Big Garden Birdwatch. We were delighted to have a chat with Judith Conroy, one of the researchers for Blooms for Bees, to find out a little more…
Our beepalaces are handmade in Stoke, once at the heart of the industrial revolution and pottery production. According to Stoke’s newspaper, The Sentinel, the number of people now working in the pottery industry in the UK is around 8,000 – down from 50,000 people working in Stoke-on-Trent’s pottery factories in the 1970s. Whilst we’re unlikely to ever see those kind of numbers again, Stoke has recently retooled its kilns (Emma Bridgewater’s factory is also in the area) and we’re proud to be a part of the next chapter of the potteries’ story. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, we know the advent calendars have only just gone up, but as we’re into December proper we feel we can now utter the word ‘Christmas’…
Here’s a round up of some of our favourite ideas for Christmas gifts, all of which are likely to add a little contemporary and colourful style into your garden. Read the rest of this entry »
