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woodpeckers, witnessed blackbirds and robins fighting over territory, and sat a little too close to a wasps' nest.It's generally a very good habitat for wildlife: there's a mass of ivy to provide food and shelter for all manner of creatures, and something

later.My mum finally let me dig her a pond two years ago, and it's teeming with frogs, newts, damsel and dragonflies. But what happens when you fill in a pond? Sadly, I found out a few weeks ago, when I discovered seven baby frogs living in the drain

I need some exercise to counter the effects of too many chocolate fancies and all that smoked cheese.On Friday I drained the pond. Or rather I bailed several hundreds of gallons of smelly, gloopy water using whatever came to hand - plastic planters

-year-old is still enthralled by insects, and was amazed by the bellowing buzz coming from the drain outside our back door recently. Suddenly, a black and yellow insect, large enough to make the rest of the family wince, floated out through the cast iron grill cover

I’m afraid I’ve been rather disparaging about fat balls and landscape gardeners again. It all came out at the Kent Wildlife Conference, held on Saturday at the University of Greenwich’s swanky new Medway Campus, down in Chatham.The theme

landscape.Native plants are much better for our wildlife than introduced ones. A native tree (such as oak or hawthorn) might provide food and shelter for 150 insects, birds and other animals, but an introduced one (such as Japanese maple) is often devoid

. With minimum care, they'll flower year after year, and many will bulk up into clumps after a few years.Like cultivars, species tulips prefer growing in free-draining soil in full sun. Plant them in drifts for swathes of colour, dot them around a rockery

20 seconds worrying what the neighbours would think, and then relaxed, happy with our new arrival.My bumblebees (RIP) were rescued from friends who were landscaping their garden; some of my frogs were rescued from a kitchen drain and the rest I picked

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