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, but venture into the garden and you'll see another side to this menace.Get outside early on cold mornings with camera in hand and you might be lucky enough to capture images of the ephemeral ice crystal patterns and designs left by Jack Frost. They

throughout the winterSee, not everything about frost is bad for the gardener.

I just can't resist getting my fingers into compost in February. I know it's too early really, as there is frost on the grass and the days are still short. But now we're getting the odd splash of sunshine, between the ice and gales, I'm eager to get

early in winter before. I’m sure my friendly BBC weather forecaster will provide me with plenty more weather statistics when I next tune in.So, what does this mean for our plants and gardens? Firstly, take very great care walking out into your garden

if I leave it until the suggested time of 'after the first frost'. It's true that a zapping by freezing temperatures will make for better sloe gin, but me, I'm going to simply pop the sloes in the freezer. It has exactly the same effect and because

Do you have an autumn clear-up in your garden? Do you cut down all your herbaceous stuff so that everything is tidy for the winter or do you leave everything until the new year? Most people nowadays leave it until later to give food for small birds

Has the snow been a good or bad thing for our gardens? Well, probably a bit of both, but I do live in hope that the cold weather has helped kill off a few garden pests. We've all had our fair share of snow over the past couple of weeks, with varying

and bumps will make them adopt unnecessarily distorted shapes. Oh, and don't add too much manure, as that will make them fork. The roots are best harvested after the frost has been, as the cold tends to make them much sweeter and more delicious.My wife

for as long as possible, in order to feed the birds and give the frost something to hold on to, but there comes a time when one has to surrender to weather, nature and decay.As you can see from the picture above, that moment has, I think, arrived. (Just

In the words of Benny Hill: "I'll never know how a rose can smell so sweet and pure, And hold its head up high when it's standing in manure!".Old Benny cannot have been much of a gardener (a statement borne out by the fact that he lived all his life