Let our editor introduce you to the July issue

Our July issue is out now. Let our Editor Hatta Byng talk you through the highlights, from a weavers' cottage in Wiltshire to a timber cabin in Norway. Don't want to go to the shops? Download House & Garden on your iPhone, iPad or Android device now or subscribe today.

I spent yesterday in our garden giving it a much needed sort-out for summer. We moved there five years ago and soon after built a studio at the end, but otherwise we have simply tweaked and added to the previous owners’ planting. We have had some help from a family friend who runs a garden maintenance company, but mostly I have enjoyed pottering about in it. As have our children – although my five-year-old seems to favour the secateurs above all else and snips away at anything and everything the minute I turn my back. Now, seeing the city gardens that Elizabeth Metcalfe has pulled together for this month’s ‘Design ideas’ (from page 53), I wonder if we could have been a bit more ambitious with our little London rectangle. Elizabeth’s examples show that there is actually so much more you can do than plant a border up and down the sides. I love the idea of filling it with box hedges and vegetables like Henrietta Courtauld of The Land Gardeners, for instance, although sadly a patch of grass is probably a necessity for small children.

This issue is full of ambition and people who have not shied away from hard work to achieve extraordinary results. On pages 72–77, Rebecca and Harry Whittaker took on a ‘gruelling’ project trans-forming a disused weaver’s house and workshop into a beautiful house for themselves. In Yorkshire, the architect Tom Brooksbank has turned two fairly ordinary farm cottages into something quite grand for his downsizing parents (from page 86), and from page 92, the owners held an invited competition to select an architect to create a striking modern house in a remote part of Norway.

To honour ambition in design this year, we presented three awards at a party last month to celebrate the 100 Top Designers. I have always been rather nervous of giving awards – award ceremonies for a start can be tedious – but having won my first magazine industry award last year and now handed out these ones, you realise how affirming it is for the recipient and the teams behind them. All three of our winners show imagination and ambition – even bravery – in the way that they approach a project and in the end result.