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it to dry, then tie it to your Christmas tree by the poppy stalk.More festive projectsMaking a crab apple Christmas table decorationMaking home-made Christmas decorations from berries and rosehipsMaking Christmas candlesMake a Christmas wreath video project

Garden Birdwatch.Birds will only visit gardens where they feel safe. The ideal bird-friendly garden has a mixture of trees and shrubs for birds to shelter in, a lawn from which ground-feeding birds can forage for ants and worms, and a wild, grassy area

or planting a shrub or tree, now’s the time to do it.There’s a small selection of fruiting plants in my garden, namely holly, guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), dog rose  (Rosa glauca) and ivy. All were planted as bare-root shrubs last autumn, except the ivy

displays on so many trees and shrubs, such as pieris. But with blossom on many fruit trees now at its peak, frost can kill flowers before bees have had a chance to pollinate them. When this happens the blossom will fall without developing any fruit

the garden. It was very low, only just clearing the apple tree. This may have had something to do with the large pigeon it was clutching in its talons. It flew, rather laboriously I thought, down over the gardens to the short row of tall trees that bound

to bite into an apple or plum and find a maggot inside (perhaps disappointing isn't quite strong enough). But how satisfying to hang a sticky pheromone trap in your trees and catch the culprits red handed, so to speak. They're out there, getting up

Last winter, when I went to great trouble to feed the birds in my garden, my offerings were largely ignored. This winter, I'm trying again, leaving seeds, chopped apples and suet pellets for ground-feeding birds such as robins, blackbirds

. Brilliant.There are four of them, and they do the airborne equivalent of scurrying about, spending a few moments examining the rather twisted apple tree and the lichen-coated pear tree, before bouncing down to the feeders and fat balls to practice

A bit of garden clearance in the rain is always therapeutic. Working off a good lunch and feeling the drip of water down my neck, I feel my endeavours are all the more noble. Actually all I'm doing is ripping the vine out of the apple tree it's been

there, chattering loudly in the apple tree, was old black and white, cocking its head first one way, then the other.I was really chuffed. Not about having the bird in the garden, but about the boy correctly identifying it. I congratulated him on his