In this article, we hope to illustrate the great qualitative and quantitative strides that star-formation studies have taken in the past few years, by looking at three highlights from our own work using the ESO Very Large Telescope UT1, Antu, and its facility near-infrared camera/spectrograph, ISAAC. In particular, we have chosen examples which illustrate a key theme running through our work, namely that of environmental impact, both in the effects that the birthplace of a star can have on its evolution, and in the back reaction that star formation can have on its surroundings. These are just a selection from the sample of young clusters and protostellar objects we are studying with the VLT, and of course, only a small subset of the work being carried out by the broad and active European star- and planet-formation community.