Continuing our series of ‘Spring Pots’ blogs, Laetitia Maklouf gives Neom followers some of her best tips for instant, seasonal loveliness you can plant in pots.

For summer clouds

Go quickly! and find some verbena x hybrida or nemesia (which will be out on the shelves just as soon as the weather stops being naughty). A wide, shallow terracotta container is best and plant masses together. You’ll eventually get a gorgeous pastel puff of froth for your trouble which, when it gets straggly can be brutally chopped and fed with liquid seaweed, to make it come back again and delight you for even longer. I love it passionately.

For the promise of bliss

Of course, at this time of the year, you must sow or plant sweet peas. Wait until the weather is warm enough if you want to start them from seed (and I’m talking about the sort of whether that allows you to bare your neck and throw out your arms). Or, you can simply buy seedlings from the garden centre and plant them in a nice deep container, making sure they have a wigwam of canes up which to scramble when the time comes. For amazing scent, go for Spencer hybrids or the old favourite ‘Cupani’…but then you don’t need me to tell you about scent; you’re Neom lovers.

The lowdown on planting in pots

For Summer Clouds, and for the ideas in last week's blog, I would use a half and half mix of ordinary peat-free multi-purpose compost and John Innes no 2. You can just use multi-purpose but you’ll need to be a bit more attentive about watering as it is less good at staying moist.

For Sweet Peas I use one quarter multi-purpose, one quarter John Innes No 2 and half well-rotted manure. These are really hungry plants.

For feeding pots, I use liquid seaweed or tomorite regularly (whenever I remember), although I would never feed thyme or mint.

And remember to make sure your containers are as large as possible, and have saucers to catch excess water – making watering much easier

Enjoy
xLaetitia

Laetitia is author of two books: ‘The Virgin Gardener’, and ‘Sweet Peas for Summer: How to create a garden in a year’.

She blogs at www.laetitiamaklouf.com, tweets @laetitiamaklouf and face-books at Laetitia Maklouf, where you can seek her out and ask her absolutely anything you want.

Photos: Jill Mead

It’s still chilly outside... not even a hint of apple-blossom (which always, for me, heralds April in style). But a delayed spring holds the promise of glory, because it means that we may well get wonderful combinations, like blossom AND daffodils all at once. Anyway there’s no reason not to start gently playing with a few things outside, and pots are perfect for this, as they are small, and separate from the garden, and somehow tinkering with a pot does not require any firm commitment to the rest of a space (which can feel overwhelming, particularly at the beginning of the season).

For instant loveliness

Look no further than what’s on the shelves at your local garden centre right now. Because of the weather, that probably means a wonderful array of primroses, cowslips, tulips, daffodils and muscari. Snap them up and put them in large shallow containers, adding the odd hardy fern, and you have instant Spring beauty that you can plant out in your garden proper (if you have one) when they finally go over.

For cheery, smiling faces

It’s got to be pansies (or viola if you want to be proper about it). Armies of beauteous colours and textures, from fruity, frilly bright yellows, to sultry bruised blues are hitting the shelves right now. Again, for these, I like to use large shallow terracotta bowls, and I always stick to one colour, but if you’re short on space, then have a go at creating a cascade of them in stacked pots (for how-to, see my book Sweet Peas for Summer). Treat them well and these will last you well into the summer, particularly if you dead-head (remove spent flowers) regularly.

For fragrant feel-appeal

Go and gather some small pots of herbs. Thyme is a real winner, and garden centres are full of masses of different varieties, from trailing to variegated. I like to plant up a mish-mash of different terracotta pots with these lovely hummocks of scent and mass them together in one corner. You can do the same with different varieties of mint – it looks fabulous and improves your cooking no end. For Thyme and mint I use just John Innes no 2 compost as these are long-term plantings.

Oh, and one last thing; make sure your containers are as large as possible, and have saucers to catch excess water – this makes watering much less of a chore.

Enjoy
xLaetitia

Laetitia is author of two books: ‘The Virgin Gardener’, and ‘Sweet Peas for Summer: How to create a garden in a year’.

She blogs at www.laetitiamaklouf.com, tweets @laetitiamaklouf and face-books at Laetitia Maklouf, where you can seek her out and ask her absolutely anything you want.

Photos: Jill Mead

Gingerbread is not just for before Christmas. It is also a failsafe way to keep younger children entertained in that time between Christmas and New Year. Get them busy with the cookie cutters and the icing and you can have a mini Gingerbread dessert table, made entirely by your kids for New Years Eve.

Pre-heat oven 180c
350g, plain flour
100g self-raising flour
125g dark soft muscovado sugar
125g butter, room temperature
1 large egg
125g golden syrup

Sift the flours in to the bowl of the mixer and add the sugar. Combine with a spoon. Add the butter, chopped in to pieces and mix, using the paddle, until resembles breadcrumbs. Making a well in the mixture add the egg and the syrup, mix together on a slow/medium speed until the mixture forms a ball. Roll out and cut out the shapes you want, bake on a lined sheet for up to 15 mins.

Revive the Gingerbread by warming gently for a few moments in the oven, sandwiching two gingerbread men together using a good quality ice cream and drizzling with salted caramel and a sprinkle of ground cinnamon! There is no finer way to see in a new year and your kids will feel very pleased that they baked up storm for such an important occasion.

These delicious gingerbread men are a perfect accompaniment with our Restore Home & Travel Candles - with a blend of Jasmine, Ginger & Sandalwood.

Ginger bread men by Cherry Menlove, Homemaker, Author of The Handmade Home and owner of Picketfencebaking.com

Since we launched our bodycare range, I’ve been pestering the product development team about making organic Bath Foam…but it’s probably one of the trickiest products we have created at Neom and has taken us over two years. Our philosophy is to never use SLS (something which creates the foaming effect) because it can irritate the skin, so we had to take an alternative route to make sure our Bath Foam actually, well, foamed!

We eventually went for an alternative way of manufacturing and blending coconut oil and vegetable oils which offered us a safe ingredient that gave our Bath Foam those all-important bubbles in the tub. Then came adding the scent, this was another challenge. The blend of essential oils we added made the formula really watery and just glugged into the bath. So, I spent hours and hours adding in and taking out a mix of over ten different essential oils until we found the right balance of scent which made the bath foam stable, a joy to use and smell divinely tranquil.

I am thrilled to say it’s one the most successful bodycare launches we’ve had (perhaps it’s because it’s so ground-breaking! Not to blow my own trumpet or anything) so it makes all the hard work really worth it. Hats-off to our hard-working PD team too! May this pic be a reminder of all your hard work and the many, many baths we’ve had at testing the hundreds of formulations!

Enjoy our new Bath Foam made with 74% organic ingredients & 26% natural ingredients with ingredients like soothing Aloe Leaf, Marshmallow, and Sweet Almond.

We recently caught up with Jemma Kidd! She’s the sister to supermodel Jodie, celebrity makeup artist and mum of two-year old twins. Jemma shared with us what her favourite NEOM products are…

Baths are the few moments in a day I have to myself, so I cherish them. NEOM’s are my absolute favourite. It’s the scents I like most – so strong and instantly relaxing. They last for hours too! If I use them in a bath in the morning, my bathroom will smell like that for the rest of the day. I have so many bath oils and the smell disappears quite quickly. NEOM’s are really good quality though. The Lavender, Jasmine and Brazilian Rosewood in their Real Luxury fragrance smells particularly luxurious.

When you have two kids to take care of and a business to run, life is pretty hectic. Juggling everything is hard and it’s about striking the right balance of work, the children and husband at home and time for myself, which means relaxing with a good book and a delicious candle. I like NEOM’s Cocooning candle full of Mandarin, Ylang Ylang & Chamomile.

I do love a good body wash. My favourite is NEOM’s Complete Bliss fragrance which is Moroccan Blush Rose. Again, it’s just super-luxurious. The quality is fantastic - it smells of proper rose, not artificial. Everything in my life is organic and I’m quite strict about it, so authentic products all the way.

Laetitia has been named the ‘Nigella Lawson of the Gardening World’, and is a self-confessed plant geek after discovering her mother’s plant encyclopaedia and a packet of seeds at the back of a cupboard one day and grows the most beautiful and deliciously scented plants. We caught up with Laetitia and got some insider hints on plant scents and how to grow-your-own…

Up until now, I’ve always favoured Spring over Summer – mainly because of the sense of newness and hope that it brings. But this year has been different – we haven’t really experienced ‘Spring’ – the weather has shunted us straight from Winter into Summer, and I am simply drinking in the glorious bounty of it all.

If you know me at all, you’ll be aware that I am extremely keen on scent, and a plant without any has got to be pretty special to deserve a space in my life. It’s impossible to name a favourite combination really, but in general I always find that putting mint or nepeta with any deeply floral scent will add a touch of freshness to it and create a knockout partnership. Perhaps my favourite scent of the summer is that of gladiolus callianthus (sometimes called acidanthra). You can grow these lily-like blooms in a container and the scent is quite simply out of this world.

As far as gardening goes, this time for me is one of lazing around doing as little as possible in terms of hard labour. I want to flit around picking flowers and scenting my home. As I write, there’s a posy of roses (a David Austen one, called ‘The Alnwick’ is my absolute favourite right now), nepeta, pinks, lady’s mantle and lavender to keep my olfactory senses satisfied.

But fresh flowers aren’t always available, and there are certain places (like my very dark entrance hall) where they won’t get appreciated, so I’ve got a NEOM Violet, Chamomile and Cedarwood reed diffuser to scent my comings and goings. Violet flowers have a particularly special fragrance – it is so powerful that it actually numbs the sensors in your nose and stops you smelling anything after a while, so mixing the essential oil with other fragrances overcomes this problem and gives you the best of both worlds.

I like to tinker with plants, making everything from my own rosewater to sweet ciceley custard. Today I’m preparing for hot weather by putting sprigs of mint and rosemary into small misting bottles with filtered water. If you put these in the fridge they make a wonderfully refreshing spritz for scorching days. But there are certain plants I can’t grow, so when I want something exotic I love Neom’s organic body wash, and the Happiness scented candle with White Neroli, Mimosa and Lemon. On a warm night you can close your eyes and get transported to another world…such is the power of scent.

You can find ‘recipes’ for all the tips above, and more inspiration in Laetitia’s book ‘Sweet Peas for Summer’ and on her website, www.laetitiamaklouf.com

We know her sister Sienna has been using NEOM’s new Cocooning products during her pregnancy; however we recently caught up with Sienna’s sister Savannah to find out her top-tips to de-stress…

I get up at around 6am, depending on when my baby, Bali, does. She usually wakes up pretty early because of the light streaming through the window. The first thing I do is take a lovely deep bath in aromatherapy bath oils which wake me up and leave me smelling great for the day. NEOM’s Real Luxury version is perfect – I love the Lavender, Jasmine and Brazilian Rosewood essential oils – it’s a real anytime bath oil.

After breakfast I head to my studio on Savile Row in London, where I have started a new clothing label (I recently left Twenty8Twelve, the line I started with my sister, Sienna). We always burn the NEOM candles. It really keeps the office feeling gorgeous and smelling amazing. There’s something about burning candles which really help me to de-stress – important in the fashion world! When things get really full-on I will listen to some African music to get my team smiling and feeling calm. It really works! If I have time, I love to go to Jivamukti Yoga after work for a class, but since having Bali six months ago it has been put on the back-burner a bit, I just want to get home to her as quickly as possible. I have another bath in the evening with Bali and add some lavender. I find it really helps her to sleep better. That’s my working day, but if I had a free day to do exactly what I liked, it would have to be with my family on a beach somewhere hot and gorgeous!

Abigail James is a holistic therapist and facialist who specialises in a more natural and organic approach to beautiful skin and health. Abigail has over a decade of experience in natural beauty and is fast becoming the go-to therapist for London’s Elite who are in need of a relaxing, healthy treatment.

Here at NEOM, we’ve known about Abigail’s healing hands for a while as she loves NEOM. But we thought we’d ask her to give us a little insight and a handful of remedies and rituals most important to do at home.

I have been working as a therapist for many years. I personally felt I wanted to make the move from using synthetics to more natural beauty for the simple fact I was reacting to so many products and so were my clients. I found that the main skin irritants are synthetic fragrance and lab-created ingredients which the body just does not like or recognise. This often results in a skin reaction – it became that I was treating sensitized skin to product ingredients rather than actually treating the skins natural state. So I decided to switch – believe me once you do, you’ll never go back!

I often find I get asked about what you can do at home to help with your beauty regime. I always say my favourite home ingredient perfect for treatments which I am sure everyone has is their kitchen cupboard is honey. It’s so amazing at healing the skin. Apply it while in the bath with your hair tied firmly back, leave it on the skin for 10 minutes then add a bit of warm water and massage it deeply all over the face. Why not mix in a smudge of natural yoghurt to this too - (really, I do this at home!) It’s great. Also, keep your eye cream in the fridge; the coolness helps freshen up the eye area, keep it next to two teaspoons, then apply these cold to the whole eye area after applying the cream for bright sparkly peepers!

I also think everyone should invest in a good facial oil - especially at night, they can absorb easier than a cream and are great for re-balancing and nourishing the skin rather than overpowering it which some creams can do at night time, especially for a skin that is prone to blockages and oiliness.

I am very sensitive to scent, it is so important to me and often my mood affects how I respond to a particular smell. I recommend having a variety of candles around my home to use. Dependant on my mood, I often opt for more lemony fresh scents like the Refresh candle, I find these sort of scents help give me clarity when I am working from home. But my all-time favourite is NEOM’s Happiness candle – it’s just beautiful. White Neroli and Mimosa are my absolute favourite scents; I have individual perfume notes of both of these along with Jasmine. A twice weekly Body Scrub also makes me feel amazing, I will often do this after my morning hill-run when I am in the Cotswolds, really gets the circulation going, and lashings of Real Luxury Body Oil while my skin is still wet, with the feminine scent it’s a touch of pampering at the beginning of the day, start as you mean to go on is my motto!

www.abigailjames.com

Katie Derham is the Radio 3 broadcaster and presenter of The Proms for BBC 1 and 2 and is a very busy mum of two daughters. We had a quick chat with Katie recently and asked her how she likes to relax and escape her hectic life (if only for an hour) – so we wanted to share with you...

When you have children – a 12 year old and six year old in my case – you’re ALWAYS busy. Take today, for example, I had the day off work and, after a morning of admin catch-up, I carted our family pet rabbit, Buster, off to school as my youngest was ‘giving a talk’ on him.

It’s clear I don’t have much time for myself, however when I get the chance my favourite way to relax is with a luxurious spa treatment or massage, which I sneak in from time-to- time when I’m feeling particularly stressed! In an ideal world, I’d have a full-time masseuse in my home (what a luxury that would be!). The more realistic and a more attainable way to relax is waiting until the kids have gone to bed and sticking on a Homeland or Borgen box set – I’m obsessed. I’ll also light NEOM’s Moroccan Blush Rose candle. The scent is so calming and delicious and reminds me of a trip to Morocco I took with my husband, John, recently. Also, now that we’ve moved to the countryside out in the sticks the candles come in extra handy to prevent the house smelling of dog!

Vicki Edgson is passionate about making sense of healthy living. She co-founded the health brand The Food Doctor, runs her own prestige nutritional therapy clinic in London as well as the award-winning Vital Energy retreat in Ibiza – what a place to retreat, we say!

Vicki is big fan of NEOM so we recently caught up with her to get some easy and quick tips on what’s good to eat this time of year to help boost your mood.

We’re into May. This is one the best times of the year for feeling full of Vital Energy! Cherry Blossom abounds, the street markets are full of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and everything smells so fresh. Why not pick plums and apricots to nibble raw, or try poaching in apple juice. Choosing cinnamon and star anise is brilliant at boosting immunity against hayfever. I recommend asparagus (fat and juicy) or chard and purple sprouting broccoli to add raw to your favourite salad, or simply roasted in olive oil along with a dash of fresh basil and rosemary, to tickle your tastebuds, and raise your energy.

As a nutritionist I often find women are frequently low in magnesium. This is due to stress, anxiety and monthly cycles, so I always encourage them to increase their daily intake of dark green vegetables. The prime candidates for this include broccoli, chard, savoy cabbage and watercress. Rocket and parsley is also good in salads and a great source of iron too! Brown and red rice also provide abundant magnesium, and make a good base for delicious risottos.

Like essential oils I believe food is also good at helping your mood. Cutting down on carbohydrates is most definitely NOT good for a mood, as these are the foods that boost serotonin - the happy feel-good hormone that we all need more of! Choose buckwheat noodles for salad and stir-fried vegetable dishes, polenta for slimmer pizza bases, and rye breads for open sandwiches - the Swedes and Norwegians live on these grains, and they are all healthy, slender, beautiful and HAPPY!

I believe that we need all our senses to be titillated in order to feel alive, well and thriving. I always have the NEOM Refresh (Lemon & Basil) travel candles in the guest rooms on my Vital Energy Retreats in Ibiza, to stimulate mind and body. Their beautiful, fresh organic scent is so pure, it emulates the very principles I share during the retreat - to surround ourselves only with those elements that are taken from nature - fresh, seasonal food, clean air and pure water. Join me there - you won't regret it!

www.vickiedgson.com/retreats