The Big Summer Edition

Flowers, Fashion, Food, Books & More...

Welcome to our bumper summer edition.

We’ve packed it with enough inspiration to see you through July and August, leaving plenty of time for the important things: lazy afternoons, sandy toes, long lunches in the garden, impromptu suppers with friends, and, hopefully, a little well-earned doing absolutely nothing at all.

July always seems to arrive in a glorious whirl. School plays, speech days, sports days, diaries to untangle, holidays to organise, and inboxes slowly filling with those wonderfully reassuring out-of-office replies. We spend months wishing for sunshine, only to discover that a proper heatwave requires a slower pace of its own - one that encourages early mornings, shady corners and an extra scoop of ice cream whenever possible.

Some of you may already be away, others will have enjoyed Fourth of July celebrations, and many are counting down the days until schools break up and summer holidays begin in earnest. Wherever you happen to be reading this, here’s hoping you can steal a little of that carefree holiday feeling, whether it’s found by the sea, around the table with family and friends, or with a quiet moment in the garden.

Wishing you a wonderfully happy summer. We’ll see you again in September, refreshed and full of new ideas. And for our Seedling paid subscribers, we’ll be back with more this week!

With Love,
Willow

*This is monthly free edition, but every week, I send out emails to my paid subscribers with flowery, fashion, food and wellness content - ideas to inspire, create and nurture. Plus videos, chat and much more. I hope you will join us!

Airy and free, as summer should be…

Willow Loves Summer!

What I’m loving this summer - colour, embellishment, more is more…

1. Diamanté! Crochet! Colour! Could be my more-is-more sandal of the summer…

2. Green polka dot bougie pants we didn’t know we needed until now

3. A magical mermaid-esque, floaty dress for long summer nights…

4. Tales for the teens! anything to get them talking…

5. Bejewelled safety pin ear candy

6. Colour blocking swimwear in the sunshine

Willow Loves… (6 more!)

(scroll to the end for our paid subscribers)

Beach Bound

10 Summer Classics for one and off the beach…

The beach essential - a wide-brimmed hat
The chic swimsuit for beach to lunch style
The wafty, white skirt of the summer
Shells for post-beach or on the beach if you dare

A towelling set for practical beach style
Never lose your sunnies again
A perfect pretty purse for coins for sun loungers
The beach cover up of the season
A roomy raffia friend for happy beach days
70s sunnies for the sand

Interview

Zoë de Givenchy on the garden that inspired a botanical tabletop collection…

As founder and creative director of Z.d.G., Zoë collaborates with master artisans across France, Italy and Spain to breathe new life into centuries-old craftsmanship, creating collections that feel both timeless and wonderfully relevant. Her latest collection, created in collaboration with the Palace of Versailles and Le Potager du Roi, draws inspiration from the extraordinary historic kitchen gardens, with beautifully crafted tabletop and garden pieces that celebrate their enduring legacy.

Supporting the World Monuments Fund, the collection is also a deeply personal project for Zoë, reflecting a longstanding family connection to the organisation’s work in protecting cultural heritage.

We spoke to Zoë about the inspiration behind the collection, the importance of preserving traditional craftsmanship, and why the pieces we surround ourselves with have the power to shape how we live…

Geranium Cuttings

It’s prime pelargonium time! Mine are living their best life in the greenhouse at the moment. They weren’t fans of full sun, so we moved them into dappled shade and they’ve never been happier. Now they’re full of fresh, healthy growth, it’s the perfect moment to take cuttings. It’s one of the easiest and most rewarding gardening jobs you’ll do—and best of all, gardening for free!

Step 1.
Choose healthy, fat shoots from your geranium plant and remove them from the parent plant by cutting immediately below a bud or node. A node is a nobble where a stem will sprout from.

Step 2.
We want the growing power to go into growing new shoots, not into the existing ones so remove the flower buds and leaves from the bottom half of each cutting and cut the stem just below a node. When you are left with just one main stem (with the two nodes) you have a cutting!

Step 3.
Fill a little pot with compost.

Step 4.
Then make a hole with your finger or a pencil and insert your cutting around the edge of the pot. You can have two or three cuttings in each pot.

Step 5.
To create a greenhouse effect, I like to put a plastic bag secured with an elastic band over the top of the pot and snip some tiny holes in the plastic. Keep the cuttings inside in a well lit position.

Water every couple of days.

Summer Book Club

There is nothing better than reading in summer - preferably fiction to escape with in the pages of proper, actual books - on the beach while dozing to the sounds of waves crashing and children playing, little splots of salt water or pool splashes blurring the letters on thumbed down pages.

We’re sold… but what to read? Nothing too dramatic, depressing or taxing. Something uplifting, inspiring and even, funny, a page-turning mystery or period romp.

Here are our top picks for summer reads as voted / approved by Seedling readers. Please do let us know in the comments what you’ve loved and other recommendations…

1. The Correspondent by Victoria Evans
   The multi-award winning hit, this is a surprisingly absorbing and moving story about Sybil Van Antwerp who at seventy-three, is slowly losing her sight and always writing letters As Pandora Sykes says, ‘What a novel! Tender, dry, sharp...devastating, but still feel good’ and will make you want to start writing letters again.

2. Yesteryear by Caro Clare Burke
   As darkly funny as it is shocking and gripping, Yesteryear is more than a look inside the trad wife era - an electrifying examination of tradition, fame, faith and the performative nature of womanhood

3. Whistler by Ann Patchett
   The new international bestseller from the author of Tom Lake and The Dutch House, Whistler is a stunning piece of writing and a moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures

4. Strangers by Belle Burden
   The much talked about, instant best-seller - an empowering, must-read memoir of the end of a marriage and the start of a personal revolution

5. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
   The story of how London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. The author follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s life of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld

6. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
   From the author of The Help, comes a rip-roaring adventure of found family, complex sisterhood and tested moral compasses.

7. The God of The Woods by Liz Moore
   Some said it was tragic, what happened to the Van Laars. Now, fourteen years later, the family’s teenage daughter has gone missing in the same wilderness as her brother - a beguiling novel with a relentless grip. You won't be able to put it down.

8. Heart the Lover by Lily King
   A surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing the narrator to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, this is a touching and deeply affecting love story about time and regret and will have you hooked from page one.

9. Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild

   Blending a page-turning moral dilemma with a sweeping love story, Finding Grace explores the price of secrets and asks whether it's ever too late to tell the truth - a stunning debut novel

   

   

10. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
    A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force: A novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty - a page-turning story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.

11. Margot’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

    The unputdownable and hilarious novel that inspired the Apple TV series.As the child of an ex-pro wrestler and a Hooters waitress, Margo Millet's always known she'd have to make it on her own. When she finds herself pregnant by her English professor and in need of cash fast, she comes up with a plan…

12. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
    Soon to be a film, this stunning novel has captured the hearts of millions of readers with a heartbreakingly beautiful story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II, when women’s stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked. And once you start with Kristin Hannah you won’t stop…

13. Land by Maggie O’Farrell

    ‘You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow’ - a spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy - from the author of Hamnet and so many literary masterpieces

14. Cleopatra & Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
    From the author of last summer’s hit, Blue Sisters, this was her debut novel - an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage

15. The Artist & The Feast by Lucy Steeds
    A best selling and captivating novel of love, art, food, desire and thwarted ambition, which builds intensity over one scorching French summer in 1920s Provence

The Bomb Lolly

Bomb Lolly by Ella Risbridger

“Bomb, and her little cousin the Bomb Lolly, were such a fundamental part of my childhood summers I am always surprised they don’t form a more solid cornerstone for summer culture as a whole. I actually have never met anyone, outside of my immediate family and thefamilies we grew up spending summers with, who understands properly about Bomb and Bomb Lolly.

When I talk about it people like to tell me I mean bombe, and listen, I suppose I sort of do: bombe is the fancy Italian semi-spherical gelato-type number that did big business in the eighties, and Bomb Lolly is like if that fancy Italian left, like, Milan to run a commune in the mountains. No ice cream, just whipped creme fraiche mixed with berries; water, a little sugar, a little lemon juice depending on thetartness of your fruit; and handfuls of crumbled meringue swirled through. It’s most like, I suppose, a kind of frozen pavlova, either in a bowl or in lolly moulds (depending on if it’s B or B.L.). Any berries you want. The sound of the summer.” Ella Risbridger

MAKES 12 LOLLIES, SOME FOR NOW, SOME FOR LATER

500g frozen berries
400ml creme fraiche
100g sugar
250g meringue (shop-bought is fine; recipe on p.146)
100g white choc chips

Blitz the frozen berries with 100ml water until smooth. Whip the creme fraiche with the sugar. Crumble the meringue into the creme fraiche.

Layer the berries and creme fraiche meringue either in lolly moulds (perfect) or swirl together in a Pyrex bowl (also perfect, less of a lolly). Freeze until set.

This recipe and extract is taken from Ella Risbridger’s latest book, The Kitchen Book

Summer Arts & Culture

What to see, visit & plan this month…

1. Visit the David Austin Roses workshop at Daylesford on the 29th July

2. Don’t miss the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition until 23 August

3. Visit the Henry Moore exhibition at Kew Gardens

4. Visit Opera in Holland Park over the summer

5. Visit the Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A

6. Get tickets to Wilderness and The Big Feastival for live music and more in The Cotswolds

7. Visit a Giffords Circus this summer when it’s nearby

8. Go and see To Kill A Mockingbird at the Wyndham Theatre unit 12 September

9. Visit The Tate Modern for Frida Kahlo, Julio Le Parc and Tracey Emin exhibitions

10. Go the Regents Park Open Air Theatre for Shakespeare and more

Where else should we go this summer?

Colours of Summer…

PS. Willow Loves (6 more!)

Summer essentials, to make getting dressed easy, breezy, fun!