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It's Gardeners' World 'Grow Your Own' Week and I really am trying to grow my own, honest. Up at the allotment, everything's looking a bit bedraggled after the rain. The onions and garlics are looking just about OK; I'm hoping the strawberries

I parked in a side street in Forest Hill last week and walking down to the Horniman Museum I noticed something odd with a small Norway maple, Acer platanoides, growing in a rather untidy hedge. Some of the leaves were dappled with the pale blotches

Walking back from the Horniman Museum last week took me past a large oaktree growing just inside a front garden. The tree looks like an old pollardand must pre-date the early 20th century houses hereabouts. What caught myattention were all

animals are transient, they come, they go; but wild plants ... they come, they stay, they get in the way, they interfere, and they compete with the flowers and vegetables we choose to grow. I think this attitude to 'weeds' is grossly unfair, so here

Dulwich, pictured left, makes of the wild plants turning up in the rough lawn; they are pyramidal orchids, Anacamptis pyramidalis.I was entranced to find them growing here. They are usually chalk downland plants, and they take me back to my childhood

eating and growing until just large enough to transform into the fleeting adult.Although I find them regularly, I've never seen vapourer caterpillars in any great numbers, but according to several of my moth books they can occasionally be so numerous

150 years. It feeds on the fruits, using its stylet mouthparts to suck out the juices, in autumn moving to the berries of yew, which also grows profusely on the chalk downs.However, during the 1990s Gonocerus was found, first, at Bookham Common

interpretation scheme. There are a large variety of native and exotic trees, most of which I recognize, but there are a couple of oddities I'm going to have to do some research on.One of the most surprising finds is a large sprig of mistletoe growing on a broad

gardens are even more wild and overgrown. Since my main interest is in insects, these are obviously going to feature pretty heavily here, but we also get our fair share of birds and beasts through too. A few days ago I noticed that the lilies growing in a

't grow cabbages so I'm not too worried. The caterpillars sometimes make a mess of the nasturtiums, but the plants are so vigorous by now that not even a mass attack could do much damage. I had a quick look and sure enough several leaves have clusters