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Since his appointment as CEO last August, Mr Ransom has made 10 acquisitions to bolster Rentokils market share in its target markets. In the medium term, the company is forecasting around 5pc growth. This will be achieved through ongoing restructuring, a renewed focus on organic growth, as well as further acquisitions.

Acquisitions tend to be opportunistic with periods of feast and famine, he said. We are not going to go out and aggressively spend money. We are going to be disciplined.

We will also be constantly looking around the fringes of the portfolio to see if there are smaller parts of the business that we can sell to create more shareholder value but there will be no other major divestments.

Negotiations for the sale of Initial Facilities began in October last year, and Rentokil aims to complete the process by the end of March.

Adrian Ringrose, chief executive of Interserve, said that the deal brought his company valuable market share in a fragmented industry: Interserve is the number six player in this market, Initial Facilities is the number nine, together, we become the number three, he said. This deal was a very good fit for us.

Following the announcement, Interserve completed a placing of 12,897,771 new ordinary shares - 9.99pc of its issued ordinary share capital prior to the placing - at 580p apiece, a premium on yesterday's closing price of 574.5p. The placing raised 74.8m.

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Rentokil Initial sells facilities business to focus on rat-catching

Maverick Painting San Diego Pacific Beach Exterior Color Change
We often focus solely on updating the inside of a home and leave the outside alone. However, the exterior is just as important to consider. Creating "curb ap...

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Richie Incognito calls smashing his Ferrari 'self expression' and is apparently seeking treatment. (USATSI)

When someone takes a baseball bat to a Ferrari, it's the very definition of a cry for help. Fortunately it sounds like Richie Incognito is getting some help despite his initial claim that beating his Ferrari on his front lawn was a form of "self expression."

Jeff Darlington of NFL Network reports that Incognito is "currently being treated at a facility in Arizona" after what's described as a "stressful time."

The time in question likely encompasses the entire investigation into the Dolphins harassment issues in the locker room, as well as the release of the Ted Wells report and the subsequent backlash against Incognito. Not to mention his bizarre actions against his expensive car.

Treatment seems like a good option on a number of different levels. Incognito can't go back and change what happened in Miami's locker room, but certainly moving on and trying to find some peace inside his own life is a good thing.

Incognito told Fox 10 in Phoenix that he was just "venting" and that beating the Ferrari was "a piece of art."

"Oh that was that was just me venting, that was self expression, that's a piece of art. The happiest day of my life was when I got that car and now the second happiest day will be when I donate it to charity," said Richie Incognito.

The charity Incognito is referring to is, apparently "brotherhood." Whatever that is.

"The Ferrari is a story unto itself, the Ferrari is one entity, but I will tell you this the Ferrari is going to be for sale through my mission which is helping the brotherhood, whatever brotherhood it is," he said.

Incognito told Fox 10 in a lengthy interview that he is just "hanging out and moving on" while "relaxing and enjoying this warm weather."

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Report: Incognito in treatment to deal with stress

If they're not already planted, you can't plant them now. But there is a solution for your forgotten tulips. (Getty)

Editor's Note: Meet Mike in Fredericksburg on Saturday, March 22, and Sunday, March 23. Mike will be at the Home & Garden Show at the Fredericksburg, Va. Expo & Conference Center.

It is not yet time to weed and feed

I promised to stay on top of local soil temperatures. That way, I could tell you the correct time to apply corn gluten meal to your lawn to prevent the maximum amount of crabgrass seed from germinating. That magic window of time is when soil temps approach 55 degrees - roughly 12.7 degrees Celsius - as measured four inches down.

Right now, area soil temperatures are hovering around 40 degrees, so we still have a good long ways to go. By all means, get your supply of corn gluten - you'll need around 10 pounds per thousand square feet of turf to give your lawn a safe, natural and legal feeding and pre-emergent treatment. But don't apply it yet - its active, seed-killing period would be over long before our soils could reach that magic number, which last year occurred in early to mid-April. And that was after a very warm winter.

Same for seed-starting: Get your gear together by all means, but don't actually start any seeds for another couple of weeks. Mid-March is ideal for mid-May plantings.

Can corn gluten stop weeds in flower beds?

John, on the South River in Anne Arundel County, writes: "For the past three years, I have been applying corn gluten meal to my lawn and have been successful in defeating the weeds that float in from my adjacent neighbors' neglected lawns. I also have eight perennial gardens. Can I treat them like my lawn and apply corn gluten to control weeds?"

I don't advise it, John. In addition to preventing the germination of weed seeds, corn gluten meal is a fertilizer that supplies pretty much only nitrogen, which is great for grass, but not fruiting and flowering plants. It would produce good- looking greenery, but there's a real good chance it would also reduce the number of flowers on those big, green plants. And it would definitely prevent the appearance of any desired flowers that spread by self-seeding.

Boric acid the answer for indoor ants

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Garden Plot: Yes, you can save those unplanted tulips

How do we explain the Holocaust? How do we remember it? These were among the thorniest philosophical questions of the 20th century. They are no easier today in Canada when we are separated from those unspeakable events by an ocean and, nearly, a lifetime.

And yet some of us keep trying. Last week, six teams of architects, artists, landscape architects and thinkers unveiled their plans for Canadas first National Holocaust Monument planned for Ottawa, in sight of Parliament, close to the Canadian War Museum.

The six proposals range from broad symbolism to more abstract gestures. The jury will have to choose between these two extremes, and has several powerful options from which to choose. In one camp are proposals from the teams led by architects Daniel Libeskind and Les Klein; on the other, designs led by Montreals Gilles Saucier and by David Adjaye and Ron Arad.

But first: What is the purpose of such a place? It is to honour Canadian victims and survivors of the Holocaust, as well as to, in the words of Foreign Minister John Baird, educate visitors of all faiths and traditions about the causes and risks of hate.

A monument can do very little teaching. But it can offer a place to come together and discuss; this one will bring the experience of the Holocaust, still felt so deeply by Canadas Jewish population in particular, onto Ottawas official landscape altering the national conversation at a time when survivors are well into old age.

Its a complex set of tasks, to produce art and architecture of the most sombre import. Each proposal accomplishes these tasks with plazas or gathering places; in several cases these are enveloped by landforms or dug into the earth, a marker of regeneration or rootedness.

Consider Libeskinds proposal. He has designed a complex structure out of his trademark crystalline forms, which he first employed with the Jewish Museum in Berlin and has since made his toolkit for other museums (including Torontos Royal Ontario Museum). Visitors would walk into a sunken plaza, as into the depths of history, and then back up again on a stair pointed at the Peace Tower. It is well thought out and freighted with visual cues, including a railway track across the floor. Too many cues, I think; it is both too flashy and too didactic.

A subtler variation comes from the team led by Toronto architect Klein and landscape architect Jeff Craft of SWA Group. It consists of two curving and arching stone forms, one carrying the weight of a birch forest (a symbolic link between Eastern Europe and Canada, as well as a symbol of regeneration). Along with an architectural theme of light-and-dark, it includes audio and video installations the latter, by the prominent artist Yael Bertana, a projection of symbols and objects of Jewish life before the war. I have not seen a monument or memorial that relies so strongly on audiovisual components; it might work very well. But otherwise is familiar aesthetic ground.

Many Holocaust memorials descend into the ground, as does Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the 1963 Memorial to the Martyrs of Deportation in Paris. The resulting tension, being constrained by the earth with a (narrow) view up to the sky, evokes a range of historical and emotional states: terror and hope, death and rebirth, destruction of a society and its reconstruction.

But to make a place that has a lasting power demands economy and simplicity of gestures. The most notable Holocaust memorial of the past generation, Peter Eisenmans Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin, is a field of 2,711 concrete rectangles, unmarked, free of text or explicit symbolism. All this reflects the central conundrum of trying with stone or concrete to say something about the industrialized killing of six million.

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Designing a Holocaust memorial for a new generation

The Menil Collection in Houston announced this month that it is planning to build the Menil Drawing Institute to exhibit and store modern and contemporary drawings. A design by Los Angeles-based firm Johnston Marklee was unveiled for the 30,150-square-foot, $40 million institute, which will be one block south of Renzo Pianos main Menil Collection building, near the Cy Twombly Gallery. An apartment complex is now on the proposed site for the Menil Drawing Institute, and construction is expected to begin in early 2015.

David Chipperfield Architects developed a site plan in 2009 for the Menil Collection, and Michael Van Valkenburgh was subsequently selected as landscape architect for the Menil campus. Johnston Marklee was chosen as architect for the Menil Drawing Institute in June 2012.

Johnston Marklee, led by founders and partners Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, described the design of the Menil Drawing Institute: The design of the Menil Drawing Institute honors the legacy of intimacy and direct engagement with art that underlies the domestic and the institutional character of the neighborhood of the Menil campus. Situated in a park-like setting, the new building assumes the scale of both a house and a museum, with a low-lying, elongated profile that blends with the architecture of the historic campus while signaling a new dimension for the future growth of the neighborhood of art.

The Menil Drawing Institute is composed of a series of buildings and courtyards unified by a white steel-plate roof that extends and hovers over the landscape, rather like a folded sheet of paper. The roof defines two entry courtyards to the east and west. Within the courtyards, the underlying folds of the roof place embrace the tree canopies, creating a shaded, contemplative atmosphere in and around the Menil Drawing Institute. Within the building, the public spaces receive diffuse natural light, which is sculpted by the folds in the roof plane and complemented by concealed artificial light sources in the creases of the walls and ceilings.

Josef Helfenstein, director of the Menil Collection, said in a statement: With a design that is at once serene and revolutionary, Johnston Marklee has enabled the Menil to make its drawings a more active and public part of the collection than ever before. Beautifully rational and open, the building is also innovative in making the modulated presence of natural light possible within a building dedicated to fragile works on paperan achievement that previously had seemed as impossible as squaring a circle.

Partial view of the Living Room and Scholar's Cloister, the Menil Drawing Institute.

The Menil Drawing Institute at dusk, looking past the west entrance courtyard.

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Johnston Marklee Design for Menil Drawing Institute Unveiled

It appears that the worst weather is over for us; and what a winter it was. It will be very interesting to see what our landscape looks like in another month or so. The wintery conditions sure did not seem to play havoc with our flower bulbs as I see them coming up beautifully in my yard and all over town. The flowering apricot trees are also in full regalia.

My winter vegetable garden was a disaster this year. Last week I re-planted seeds for radishes, kale and carrots; and planted sugar snap peas. Hopefully, the heavy rains will not rot them before they have a chance to germinate.

Here are some tips you may find helpful for tending to your landscape in the month of March.

Trees and shrubs: Finish pruning crape myrtles, but avoid the temptation to cut them back severely. Only remove crossing or broken branches and cut off old seed pods. Apply slow release fertilizer around the drip line of trees and shrubs. Dont trim hydrangeas even though their stems may look dead, as this springs flower buds are contained there.

Flowers: Prune roses. Begin a fungicide spray program for disease-prone varieties when new leaves appear or replace them with a hardier variety like Knockouts. Broadcast slow release fertilizer on perennial beds. You can divide perennials such as hostas, day lilies and phlox as soon as new growth appears.

Lawns: Dont water dormant lawns except during extended spells of warm windy weather or if the soil becomes powder dry. March is the last window to kill cool season weeds before green up. You might want to visit Williams Farm and Garden or Trent Hardware for advice regarding cool season weed control. Wait until late May to fertilize established lawns.

Vegetables: Set out small cabbage, swiss chard, kale, broccoli an bok choy plants. Continue sowing lettuce and radish seeds every few weeks for a steady salad supply.

Fruits: Fertilize fruit trees, grapes and berries with a slow release product.

If you keep on top of these tasks, taking care of your yard will not become overwhelming.

This months topic for the third Saturday workshop at the Craven County Cooperative Extension Office is Plants That Succeed. It will be on March 15 from 10 a.m. to noon. It sounds like a very informative topic, so dont miss it. March 17, also, begins the third Monday garden tours in the demonstration gardens there. The one hour tours, beginning at 5:30 p.m. are open to the public. Each month Tom Glasgow discusses different plants that thrive in the local landscape. These events are free. I hope to see you there.

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Judi Lloyd: Gardening tips for the month of March

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