Search - Articles

feeding frenzy day and night, unhindered by daytime sunshine, if you can remember what that looks like.But help is at hand. When I pop out to pick my salads each evening I usually disturb a frog or two among the leaves, finding their supper just as I

Parts of my garden have resembled something of a battleground this year. Why is it that all my favourite plants and crops have their very own pest to contend with? Grow lilies and you'll be hard pressed not to find lily beetle munching them. My

mainly flies), but in the past I've seen wasps and tortoiseshell butterflies eagerly making the most of this final feed of nectar before hibernating.Fatsia japonica is an exotic looking evergreen shrub with large glossy, lobed leaves. Despite its tropical

of Box Hill, in Surrey.Although box, Buxus sempervirens, is widely planted in gardens, Box Hill is one of the few places in Britain (along with Boxted in Kent) where it is thought to be a true native. Gonocerus had been found there, on and off, for about

and sour-tasting berries. This latter is the more famous tree, however, because (as every schoolchild knows) it provides about the only food that a silkworm will tolerate. The grubs feed on the mulberry leaves before wrapping themselves into cocoons made

-invertebrates. There was no dead standing timber to offer fungoid growth for rot-feeding beetles. And it cast no appreciable shade for the benefit of the children.On the other hand, the pond behind it was completely shaded and overshadowed. It was polluted by leaf and twig fall