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You might see your garden as an isolated entity, but the local hedgehogs, frogs, birds and bees view it differently. As long as there are holes under fences for animals to get from one garden to the next, yours is just one piece in the varied jigsaw

Spring is in the air, and plants are beginning to shake off their winter dormancy. The birds and bees are making a cautious appearance, along with my fellow allotmenteers.My neighbours Ron and Mrs Ron were hard at it last weekend - they've got three

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

It's easy to consider bees and birds when gardening – we see plenty of them if we grow the right plants – but what about bats? Emerging from their roosts at dusk and returning by dawn, they can often go unnoticed.My partner is a huge fan of bats

As a rule, I only grow plants that will benefit bees, moths and other pollinators. I do relax this rule, though, by growing auriculas. I do this for my partner, who loves them (even if bees don’t).We have built up quite a collection over the years

barely seen any rain at all.In drier parts of the UK, plants are bursting into flower earlier, bees and butterflies are out earlier, and the ground, which should be warm and wet from April showers, is parched. All this and some areas are still getting

are already limited to far northerly localities and some are specialist montane rarities. It does not take many degrees temperature increase before these already high-altitude bees are at the top of a mountain, and have nowhere else to go, except

and moss.I have grand plans for my lawn. It's only tiny, but it will be full of pretty 'weeds', wildflowers and crocus. Butterflies will lay eggs in it, bees will drink nectar from it and I will sunbathe on it.At the moment I can't really describe what I

in the garden, providing food and shelter for huge numbers of invertebrates including wood-boring beetles, solitary bees and woodlice. It can come in many forms: a tree stump left to rot into itself can provide a rot hole for the larvae of Eristalis hoverflies

If I only had one container or window box, I would fill it with herbs. Fresh herbs are a joy to cook with, they smell good, their flowers are loved by bees, and most perennial species can tolerate a bit of neglect.Having said that, my perennial herb