Home Front: interiors, ideas, events, people

Brotherly love for linen

Colm Walsh is a bit of a bedlinen expert. His Westport-based company Poplar Linens, which he runs with his two brothers, supplies John Lewis and other retailers with mass-market bed sheeting. But while globetrotting in search of suppliers he found himself coming across beautiful linens and artisanal textiles and last year set up Bro Sheets, an online-only high-end bedlinen offer. The product was just gorgeous – mercerised cottons that had a silk-like feel and organic linens all furnished in beautifully packaged boxes. But the name didn’t really tell the full story so he’s now expanded the offer and set up a proper online homewares shop called Sanctum, where he still stocks his bedlinen which includes linen duvets woven by Ferguson’s in Banbridge, from €200 to €280, as well as contemporary coloured napkins, from €13 each. He’s also introduced some other great brands including The Linen Works, Canvas Home and Nkuku to the mix. The result is a really slick-looking site that will make buying housewarming, thank-you and wedding gifts really easy.

[ Inrsanctum.com ]

Spring for tea in Lismore

Devonshire cream tea will be served during “Devonshire Day” on Sunday, March 19th at Lismore Castle in Co Waterford.

Guests to the castle on the day can enjoy afternoon tea in the Pugin Room and experience a preview tour of Lismore Castle’s spring gardens which have numerous camellias and rhododendrons and some particularly magnificent magnolias . The grounds also have some great sculptures by well-known artists Eilis O’Connell, Anthony Gormley and Marzia Colonna.

Devonshire Day is now an annual traditional at the castle where guests are served by the resident butler, Denis Nevin, and are then given a tour of the castle gardens. It’s all in aid of Immrama Festival of Travel Writing which this year – its 15th – takes place in Lismore from June 15th to 18th.

Tea and tours take place at 11.30am, 12.40pm, 1.50pm, 3pm and 4.10pm. Tickets are available from the Immrama office and Lismore Heritage Centre and cost €20. For bookings contact 058-53803 or 058-54975 lismoreimmrama.com

Getting down to zero waste

Can you imagine a life without household bins? Well, Bea Johnson, blogger and author of the bestselling book

Zero Waste Home

, has no waste bins in her home. Since she, her husband and two children embraced a zero-waste lifestyle in their Californian home in 2008, Johnson has become somewhat of a guru, inspiring thousands of people to reduce their household waste while remaining cool. Her book has been published in 14 languages and she gives talks all over the world.

Johnson’s mantra is refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot in that order. On her much-watched YouTube clips, she explains: “We have five rules – refuse what we don’t need, reduce what we use, reuse by swapping or buying in charity shops, recycle what we can’t refuse, reduce or reuse and rot the rest as compost.”

Videos show her shopping in stores with homemade cloth bags and kilner jars which shop assistants seem willing to fill for her, and returning to her pristine kitchen to put away her foods in neat lines of jars in drawers. She admits it takes time to declutter your home and work out a system for buying what you need. But, by doing so, she reduced family spending by 40 per cent.

Johnson will give a public talk on zero waste in the Robert Emmet Theatre, Trinity College Dublin on Monday, March 13th at 7pm. zerowastehome.com