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The mailbox at Gardeners' World magazine is brimming with letters and emails from gardeners who have been victims of theft. From these letters alone, it would seem that thefts from gardens and allotments are becoming more widespread, while

After last week's excitement about the ladybird party on the BBC allotment, I was delighted to learn that the UK Ladybird Survey had a stand at this year’s Gardeners' World Live.There’s always a few wildlife charities at the show and each year I

What an odd assortment of weather we've had this year. In just 12 months my garden has experienced heavy snow, a spring heatwave followed by a drab, damp summer, then a second heatwave in autumn. Some parts of the country have experienced drought

first venture into growing fruit and veg, and the many mistakes I made while progressing to the level I'm at today (pretty good, I think). It's been a steep learning curve.For a brief spell, aged 11, I had a vegetable patch of my own. My mother – a

knows, perhaps salad crops growing in lawns will be next year's big trend at the Chelsea Flower Show. Don't forget you heard it here first.There is a small allotment outside the offices of Gardeners’ World magazine, where there is space for a few of us

discovered cacti at university. It wasn't long before I had a flat full of plants and an allotment of my own to play with.I couldn't live without gardening - it makes me feel whole. If I'm tired, stressed, unhappy, I garden to feel better. I get up early

frilly gardening gloves, or indeed gardening gloves at all. And a bit  of common sense doesn't go amiss - I once bought my dad an electric strimmer for his allotment, but there's no electricity at the site. (He loves it though - he keeps it in his garage

and a pond. Every year a colony of buff-tailed bumblebees nests beneath the neighbours' shed and feeds on my mum's flowers, I'm sure the butterflies do the same. My dad has a nest of common carder bumblebees in his ramshackle allotment compost heap, just

the plant nearly died, so I took it to my allotment, hoping the fresh air and a good dose of sunshine would sort it out. It did, but then the greenhouse it was overwintering in was stolen, leaving it exposed to some hard, Manchester frosts. At least they put

which he would plant two pumpkin plants. My sister and I eventually got pumpkins in time for Halloween, though mine was oblong (I didn't think he'd done such a good job).Twenty years later, I grew my first pumpkins on my allotment. I chose the F1 variety