In honour of the Chelsea Royal Flower Show taking place this week, we though we’d dig out a little list of the most colourful gardens in the world to give you some inspiration for your own home, inside and out!

Up first we have this beautiful candy pink moss that grows round the base of Mount Fuji in Japan and creates a wonderful contrast with the blue skies above.

Mixing earthy neutrals with vibrant shades, this mind-blowing shot of rice fields in Yuanyang County, China shows of the wonder of nature in all its glory.

Everybody knows about Holland’s famous tulip fields, home to over 7 million flowers and a whole host of vibrant shades.

Japan again and this time purple and white Wisteria flowers covering this inspirational tunnel in the Kawachi Fuji Gardens.

Finally, for the more adventurous of you, these wild flowers found only in Namaqualand, Namibia turn an arid desert into a blossoming canvas of colour each and every spring.

Ever sat down and thought; ‘I really fancy a good read’, only to realise all your books are packed away in a box in the attic because you had nowhere to put them.

So you pick up the remote control and flick over to a repeat of the 2009 Great British Bake Off quarter final – the one where Beryl makes a Victoria sponge.

Well, thanks to ‘Nobody & Company’ – maker of beautiful designer furniture, this need no longer be a problem since they’ve come up with the fabulous ‘Bibliochaise’.

It’s a comfortable, throne-like chair with a built-in bookcase surround. The funky and functional design can house up to 300 books – the equivalent of 5 metres of regular bookcase!

So not only do you get a chair that looks great and is incredibly comfy, it also saves on storage space and gives you access to hundreds of other worlds, right at your finger tips. It even has wheels to move it around!

Now, where did we leave our copy of the latest Danielle Steele…?

Buying a new sofa is great but nothing beats the feeling of an old, worn in couch with the faint outline of your own posterior embedded into the seat.

This idea of couch potato was taken on by designer Charlotte Kingsnorth in 2009 for London Design Week and has been recently updated and expanded into vintage chairs.

The result is the strangely fluid and fluctuating “At One” couch that marries sofa and sitter into one hybrid creation.

An interesting concept but a little creepy. Maybe this one is better left in the exhibition hall than in the home.

Easter rolls around and you’ve finished all your jobs ready for the long weekend. You’ll probably give yourself five minutes of well deserved rest before you’re either crawling up the walls with boredom or being driven up it by a score of screaming kids free from school.

So what’s the solution? You can remortgage the house in order to go and see the latest release at the cinema – Monster’s Wardrobe 4 (Monsters Go to Brunch). Or you can brave your local [insert generic fast food restaurant here] where you can join your score of screaming kids with four score and ten more of the little blighters.

If none of that sounds too appealing (we can’t imagine why) then Nerdy Day Trips is most definitely your next port of call.

The kind old souls over there have painstakingly compiled a list of thousands upon thousands of ideas for trips out throughout the UK – even spanning into Europe.

What’s more, they’ve stuck them all onto a handy map so you can find the trips closest to you. It gives you a little information about each one and provides you with a direct link to each place’s website.

There’s everything from transport museums to stately homes, historic centres to farms and zoos.

So if you’re stuck with nothing to do this bank holiday weekend, check out their site, you’ll find no shortage of ideas.

Over at Toby House, they’ve taken recycling to a whole new level. Just in time for the summer, why not get your hands on these incredible, colourful Beach Ball light shades.

They’re actually made from real, recycled beach balls. Each one is rendered using a unique and pioneering treatment to make the inside rock solid while maintaining a soft and bouncy look on the outside.

You can even see the blowhole poking out!

We think these shades are the perfect addition to a fun and funky home and would look great in a beach hut, kids room or maybe even your lounge!

A few weeks ago, we released a series of Cityscape roller blinds with beautiful cosmopolitan skylines of New York, London and Paris.

Continuing along that same theme, we stumbled across these fabulous illustrations by Dutchman Remko Heemskerk. Created during his time spent living in the Big Apple, these retro style images are stunning and use colour in a vibrant and unique way.

We think they really stand out and would make a fabulous piece for your wall. You can buy the images from Remko’s site and perhaps you could even pair them up with our Cityscape New York blind for an all American experience.

Hot on the heels of our most expensive Ming vase post a few weeks back, the story of this Faberge Easter egg will have you running to the attic in search of buried treasure.

Bought by a scrap metal dealer for the paltry sum of £8,000, the egg was due to be melted down for its gold.

Luckily the buyer happened across an article in a newspaper which revealed the egg’s true value. One of only 50 made for the Russian royal family it has recently been sold for a whopping £20m and is due to go on display for the first time in over 100 years.

One reason not to cancel your Times subscription if ever we heard one!