Let our editor introduce you to the August issue

Our August issue is out now. Let our Editor Hatta Byng talk you through the highlights, from a rural Mallorcan farmhouse to a colourful Chelsea maisonette. Don't want to go to the shops? Download House & Garden on your iPhone, iPad or Android device now or subscribe today.

When this issue arrives on the newsstands, I will be on my way to Runswick Bay on the North Yorkshire coast for a bucket-and-spade holiday with our children. There is nothing glamorous about it, but the little village hugging the hillside is completely charming and the children love it. Another real joy of it is that there is no phone reception or wi-fi, so my phone becomes almost redundant and I read a book rather than checking my Instagram account.

I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram - as I imagine plenty of you do. On one hand, it is a brilliant way of finding out who is doing what and gleaning interior and lifestyle inspiration. And it is a helpful way for House & Garden to engage with its readers. But, on the other hand, it can become an all too mindless way to while away time and a huge distraction from enjoying the moment or looking around us. What to post and what not to is pretty tricky; a new find can quickly become a cliché as it gets posted and reposted every which way, or as the maker or the seller – quite sensibly – promotes their wares. And, as Veere Grenney points out on page 58, ‘With this constant property porn, with new posts every minute, it’s
more difficult to be original.’

So while I am enjoying my internet-free holiday (I shall have to hold myself to that now), I hope you will be lapping up the pages of this magazine. Garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith discusses the glorious garden he has created in the valley at Encombe in Dorset (from page 116) and antique dealer and decorator Christopher Howe shares hisrecipes for the working lunch of our dreams (from page 123). You can be transported to an elegant nineteenth-century house in Beirut (from page 76) or enjoy a country idyll in Herefordshire, complete with a brood mare at the garden gate and long lunches in the barn (from page 100). I shall probably be dreaming that I am at the farmhouse in Mallorca (pages 92–99), feeling the heat on my skin and dipping my feet in the infinity pool, instead of eating sandy sandwiches in the rain.