Q I need to find a wedding present for my eco-aware friend. Help!

A I’ve always liked the idea of staying within the confines of traditional wedding gifts, but adding a green twist. A six-month subscription to a vegetable box scheme (find your nearest on timesonline. co.uk/realfood), say, or champagne flutes made from recycled glass ( biomelifestyle. com; £10 each). If the happy couple aren’t already creating compost together, you could give them a wormery ( wiggly wigglers.co.uk; £89.99) or a beehive-shaped composter, made from sustainable timber ( theurbangarden. co.uk; £140).

Speaking of garden gear, I spotted a mobile vegetable garden the other day. Made up of a frame supporting a couple of crates, which you fill with compost, the City Vegetable Garden has won a sustainable design award. It can be kept inside near a sunny window or on a roof terrace or balcony ( ecoutlet. co.uk; £89.99).

When I’ve been stuck for gifts in the past I’ve browsed recycledproducts.org.uk, a database of products made from waste materials. Before you wonder whether my friends suffer regular gift indignities – recycled notepad, anyone? – check it out.

There are picnic blankets made from scrap textiles ( recycle2shop.com; £36); lampshades from recycled cardboard ( use-uk.com; from £32) and the best chicken doorstops I’ve ever seen ( refab.co.uk; £12).

Q What kind of garden furniture is the most eco-friendly?

A As you may have gathered, I’m all for “closing the loop”; in other words, buying products made from recycled materials to create a UK demand for the contents of our green bins. So the furniture company Marmax Products, which transforms plastic bottles into picnic benches and other outdoor products, deserves extra green kudos. It uses up 2,000 bottles to create one bench ( marmaxproducts. co.uk; from £133). Better suited for postage-stamp sized gardens, the online green store Ecotopia offers four folding outdoor stools that are made from 90 per cent recycled plastic ( ecotopia.co.uk; £169).

If only I had room in my urban patch for a sustainably-sourced wooden garden swing, I’d be poring over the designs of the Dorset garden swing company Sitting Spiritually. Its three-seat Serenity model costs £499 ( sittingspiritually. co.uk).

For a high street job, beeline for B&Q and Marks & Spencer, which top Greenpeace’s garden furniture league table ( green peace.org.uk), selling only products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. John Lewis, Homebase and Robert Dyas aren’t far behind, but Habitat disappoints. Although it does a fine line in outdoor fairy lights, Greenpeace accuses it of having done nothing to improve its track record over the past year, with less than three quarters of its wooden garden furniture coming from certified sources. It had better watch out, or we’ll be getting jazzy solar lights from British Eco instead ( britisheco.com).

BLOGWATCH

The recent wet weather unleashed slugs and snails, the vegetable patch’s arch enemies. But once you’ve ushered them into sunken pots of beer, then what? It’s surely bad form to hurl them next door. Several organic gardening books recommend pouring boiling water on them, but it leaves you with what my boyfriend refers to as “slug soup”. This, Liz tells me, I should drain and put out for the birds. “You can also compost the dead bodies,” writes Emma, who also recommends scattering coffee grounds around vulnerable plants. Hannah uses egg shells, while Victoria recommends keeping seedlings in polystyrene pots until they are strong enough to resist attack. I’m entrusting the job to greengardener. co.uk, which is supplying me with a dose of nematodes, a microscopic parasite worm that will kill them. Wish me luck.

For Anna’s e-mail address and Eco-Blog, timesonline.co.uk/ ecoworrier

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