Search - Articles

We've had some new arrivals in our neighbourhood recently.The Rat Family arrived next door, taking up residence in their new development, under the decking, before moving on to the high-rise raised beds when they found their entrance inconveniently

savoury plant in the beds, it also grows very well in cracks in the old concrete path.Later, while I'm admiring the constant nectaring business, I see there are several species. The red-tailed, Bombus lapidarius, is there in numbers, as too is the white

.I'm surprised, though, to see little sign of wildlife at any of these flower pots - just a lone honeybee and a couple of pigeons.It is only down by the river's edge that I can see what I might call real wildlife in a garden. A tiny concrete balcony

Last year I wrote about autumn tidying and the effect this can have on wildlife. I left my garden untouched over winter, leaving hibernating creatures snuggled under a duvet of fallen leaves and rotting stems. None of my plants died or were ravaged

and various garden beds. But elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the dense diversity of sheltered hidey-holes has been replaced by ... well, quite a lot of clipped lawn, wood chippings and the modern equivalent of concrete: decking.Where the foxes used to visit us

A recent Which? Gardening report revealed that many shop-bought wildlife homes are not worth buying. The trial included hedgehog homes, bug boxes and bumblebee nesters, and concluded that only solitary bee hotels proved successful, especially home

 along the lines of  "it is nice to have guests once in a while, but I wish he'd go home now, I'd like to get to bed."

by the nocturnal ticking, but it was a tad irritating trying to get to sleep the first couple of nights with this amorous percussion going on all around us. A few times I got out of bed and banged on the wooden rafters with a shoe. It shut them up for a few minutes

annuals is one largely invented by Bunny Guinness and friends”. (Bunny can be heard talking about guerrilla gardening in the Radio 4 programme mentioned earlier.) Richard may have proved that not all guerrilla gardeners plant wildlife-poor bedding annuals

pots - everything was gone. But the queen and her bees were holding on in there, angrily defending their home. I wondered if I could encourage them to carry on. I removed the caterpillars and replaced most of the bedding, then returned the bees