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and beyond.This year is going to be particularly interesting for all the shows because the unseasonably hot weather has knocked everything out of kilter. For example, my friend Cleve West - who is building a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show for the Daily

(this is Wales after all), play host to a string quartet on the day. There are also demonstrations of coppicing, charcoal burning and yurt building. This is a two-day opening, on 11-12 June.Many villages combine their gardens in order to make a proper

, but inevitable. In London alone we are losing the equivalent of 2.5 Hyde Parks of green space each year, as landlords and homeowners pave over their gardens to build sheds, park their cars and reduce 'maintenance'. Butterflies are precious in their own right

their fence', while the local council kills established plants at their base, leaving dead stems and leaves on buildings.But a study, commissioned by English Heritage, has proved that ivy can actually protect walls. Professor Heather Viles, who conducted

. Architects, it seems, aspire to build tidy well-groomed, low-maintenance houses. And we, presumably, aspire to live in them. Notice how green it all is. Not brown. Green. But this is a wildlife desert. The wild life has been erased.The greenwashing

 plants I like, plants I dislike, animals, insects, ponds, buildings, views and panoramas, and so on. In all, I have around 60,000 images.I think that 70 per cent of my photographs should be thrown away as they are not really good enough for anything. My

fences or negotiate building sites. They are creatures of a forgotten time, when habitats remained unchanged and wild spaces were ‘wild’.Luckily, gardens can be fantastic reptile habitats. Like many garden creatures, snakes and slow worms favour log piles

and hoverflies are still on the wing, foraging for food. Nectar provides insects with energy to fly and builds them up for winter hibernation. By growing just one source of nectar-rich food, you can improve these insects' chances of surviving the cold months

Today we got our first proper frost. The roofs of the buildings are dusted with white, the grass is crispy underfoot and the seedheads are glittering with ice - at least they are when the sun breaks through the lowering cloud. All very lovely

is habitat loss in urban areas, caused by the paving of front gardens and the building over of back gardens. Changes in farming practices, such as the widespread use of pesticides, are also cited.There are quite a few moths in my garden. I love seeing them