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), the compost, the feed, the potting-on compost, the containers, in some cases the pest-sprays, the lighting and heating sometimes too. And that is not including the man-hours - probably the most unreliable, stressful and costly element in the equation!The other

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

produces quite a bag of potato and vegetable peelings, and wrapped in newspaper these can feed my compost heap.Yes, newspaper can be composted, and so can plain cardboard including corrugated boxes, tubes from toilet and kitchen paper rolls as well as egg

the young leaves were added to peoples' sandwiches; it supports at least 149 species of insect and the berries feed more than 23 species of bird; hawthorn is pollinated by dung flies and midges attracted to the mildly unpleasant smell and the fact

, at most their feeding results in a little bit of shoot distortion, so leave them alone, or if you really can't bear them, remove them by hand-picking or jetting them off with a hose.

to contain the feeders, enabling the small birds to enter via the mesh holes and feed without the threat of capture. But will the sparrowhawk simply wait nearby and catch them as they leave? Will I still see the sorry sight of a little cloud of tiny feathers

'm after - and I usually am - then my only option is to buy plants.With at least another two months of enjoyment to come I'll just keep an eye on watering from now on, adding a liquid feed about once a week to keep plants growing strongly. Then I'll brush

.Every soil needs feeding with compost to boost its organic content, and mulching with well-rotted material does just that. Thick bark chips or "pretty" man-made materials like glass, tyres and broken up CDs (yuck â?? who, other would ever use these in a

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