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is now alive with colour. And where flowers grow, wildlife follows and there are huge numbers of happily buzzing bees and flighty butterflies all over the place.Ivan has sown a huge range of flowers (about 65 species) varying from sky blue cornflowers

was distracted by an extremely industrious bee working away at a particular blossom on one of their apple trees. Intrigued and a little captivated by this particular bee's tenacity she marked the spot with a piece of ribbon.As summer turned to autumn, the fruit

by this plant: on the surface it is an excellent idea - fast growing, popular with bees, long flowering (it will happily perform for months) and reliably tough in all situations. However, it is also as untameable as a coach load of Visigoths on the razzle

want early or late flowers, I suppose. Bees don't care either way and just want to get stuck in! The other annual climber of which I am very fond is Cobea scandens. My wife and I have a competition each year to see who can grow the best specimen

bee buzzing around the place - the door is open as the afternoon is sunny. For some extraordinary reason he seems to prefer to be in here amongst the paperclips and whatever gamma rays are emitted by computers rather than whizzing around making use

vegetables also make good additions to the border - asparagus has gorgeous ferny foliage and artichoke flowers are bee magnets(Jerusalem artichokes are, however, excluded due to the possibility of indelicate post-prandial thunderings).Less obvious

My garden - like yours - is looking fantastic at the moment. Plants that were just poking from cold ground a couple of months ago are now enormous and luxuriant. Bees buzz, roses overflow and lawns are lush.Rather than just brag, I thought I

problem: the hazel (unlike many plants) cannot fertilise itself, so needs to find another tree. How to disseminate pollen from one tree to another? Many plants use insects — bees, wasps, moths, butterflies or ants — while others draw on the services

more.All this is augmented with plants grown specifically to boost fertility of the soil (so obviating any need for fertilisers) and plants to encourage bees and other pollinating insects.One of the slight disadvantages is that, obviously, a forest

and this is a campaign to put some of them back.I have decided to name this new pond Bradbury Water in honour of my clever, slightly frog- and bee-obsessed colleague, Kate!