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, but I still appreciate the romance of the idea. It takes me back to reading children’s books like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, full of lurking animals and noisy birds.Last week I renewed my acquaintance with the giant Gunnera manicata

an extraordinary topiary garden with massive yews clipped into extraordinary shapes - top hats, arches, crowns, eggs, birds, Bobby Charlton's combover etc, etc. I filmed there once (for Small Town Gardens) and the head gardener gave us two top tips: always spray

purpose of keeping hens is to eat their eggs then, to be perfectly frank, a bantam's egg is far too small to bother with.Instead you need a run or at least an area where you can enclose the birds. If you only want to keep a couple then they can easily

transfer to my newly cut down borders.I try and leave anything with a decent structure standing for as long as possible to give sustenance to small birds (and probably mice), as well as on the off chance that we might have a frost and everything

back bundles of branches that I then stick in the ground around the borders. Initially, the place appears to be colonised by enormous nesting birds, but this framework will soon be covered with plants which will, like matrons in whalebone girdles

especially to gather the droppings (not, as in Europe, to eat the birds). In dry countries other types of manure are used as fuel.Pig manure has to be about the smelliest option but provides plenty of humus. It is better in light, sandy soils.Leather scraps

of humming birds or bats, although these plants are unlikely to be found in Britain. The hazel uses a much more basic method: anemophily, or wind pollination.So, very sensibly, the hazel catkins appear at a time of year when there is certain to be some decent

as this pond that I made a while ago. There will be dragonflies, ducks, swans (if we're lucky), voles, birds, fish and all manner of amphibians. It never ceases to amaze me that if you plant things then wildlife appears almost by magic.If you have the chance

of interesting things about oaks:1. Oaks are host to an awful lot of insects, lichens and birds - not to mention the various fungi that hang around the root systems.2. Because of the number of feeding insects, oak leaves look a bit shabby by July but