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in the waste below.It's remarkable how much life a compost bin can attract. Books will tell you that a compost heap is one of the best garden features to attract wildlife but, somehow, this 'life' inside the bin can go unnoticed.We gardeners normally only

There's a mouse living in my compost bin. I first saw it one evening the other week, when I added a fresh layer of tomato side shoots and yellowing leaves. It leapt out of the bin and charged through the border. That frog looks just like a mouse, I

We have a bumblebee nest in our compost bin. I first noticed a month ago when the first few workers started coming and going. Now we have a steady stream. The bees are buff-tailed, Bombus terrestris, one of our commonest species.I've told the family

the situation. Suffice to say that some of that rabbit reappeared in the kitchen a couple of hours later.Yesterday I was wandering back from the compost heap minding my own business when there was rustling in the undergrowth and out shot … a muntjac. Harrumph

This morning we went for a walk first thing as the sun rose through the autumn mist. The fields were heaving with young partridge, a small mouse looked impertinently at us from the compost heap, a flight of ducks got up from the pond and the trees

There's a spider the size of a gardening glove in my compost bin. It obviously gets a good living in there, feeding on the flies, woodlice, beetles and earwigs, the remains of which can be vaguely guessed in its untidy sheet of a web. I wouldn

What's the point of having a compost heap unless it's to breed fruit flies. That's the way my entomologist's mind works. During the summer great clouds of them billowed up every time I dumped the kitchen waste. They got in my eyes and hair

wildlife, they can be made into great plant food and are a surprisingly versatile ingredient in the kitchen.The nettle we're used to in the UK is Urtica dioica, a perennial plant full of iron, calcium, magnesium and nitrogen, which makes it incredibly

at the front. Top up with compost and water well.To make the two bee hotels, drill several deep, 5-8mm wide holes into a 15-20cm long log, and fill an offcut of drainpipe with lengths of bamboo. Place among the plants.AdamChoose an open, sunny, sheltered site

placed the leafy cylinders back in some similar compost and covered them up. We’re hoping our digging around them didn't damage the eggs or grubs, and that in 2009 we'll all be able to see them hatch. Hopefully I'll find some circular holes in the foliage