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Do you have an autumn clear-up in your garden? Do you cut down all your herbaceous stuff so that everything is tidy for the winter or do you leave everything until the new year? Most people nowadays leave it until later to give food for small birds

, but venture into the garden and you'll see another side to this menace.Get outside early on cold mornings with camera in hand and you might be lucky enough to capture images of the ephemeral ice crystal patterns and designs left by Jack Frost. They

, replacing it with paving or gravel, are denying insects and birds an opportunity to come into their gardens to feed. And personally, wildlife is always welcome in my garden.

roof. Lovely.You could tailor your green roof to your car's make and model - a retro motor like a bronze, Ford Cortina would suit a roof of dandelions, daisies and bird's foot trefoil, while a fancy new Porsche could sport a colour co-ordinated neat

I'm not one for manicured lawns. I think lawn weeds are pretty. I'd really like clumps of bird's foot trefoil, dandelions, daisies, creeping buttercup and self-heal growing among the grass in my garden. In fact, I've just planted some clover

, not like the fat, flavourless cherries currently in the shops. Even with attention from the birds there was still plenty for us.Of course, not every foraging trip or cookery experiment works brilliantly the first time. Once my mum and I gathered rosehips

, that badgers and birds won't dig up looking for grubs, that dogs won't ruin with their scorch marks. And worm casts? What worm casts? Lawn life as we know it replaced by a carpet of convenient, sterile 'turf' -  like paving slabs in disguise.But what is a

for as long as possible, in order to feed the birds and give the frost something to hold on to, but there comes a time when one has to surrender to weather, nature and decay.As you can see from the picture above, that moment has, I think, arrived. (Just

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

In the words of Benny Hill: "I'll never know how a rose can smell so sweet and pure, And hold its head up high when it's standing in manure!".Old Benny cannot have been much of a gardener (a statement borne out by the fact that he lived all his life