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It’s life and death out there on the ivy at the moment. The far corner of our garden is a sheltered sun-trap, and the fence is now smothered in ivy flowers. The air is thick with the heavy scent of the blossoms, and the lazy buzzing of insects

The south-facing fence of our garden is covered all over with ivy, and the leaves are prime basking territory for all manner of insects. This last week, the solitary bees have started to reappear in droves. There are very many species all looking a

of the leaves when I spotted a ruddy brown bundle next to the ivy thicket. There was a fox asleep on the roof of the shed.It turned its head towards me as I cracked open the casement to take a picture. Not a very good one, I have to admit, I need a telephoto

and sunned it self on the glossy ivy leaves that cover our south-facing fence. This spring generation develops from caterpillars that fed on ivy, but probably not this clump, since they eat the developing flower buds and we don’t have any here yet. They

salvage for the crumble.We don't have the most regimented of gardens, in fact it's a bit wild sometimes. But wildlife is, by definition, wild. As I said in the magazine, it has no time for straight lines, clipped edges, smart displays, or level lawns. We

It’s all looking rather still and damp in the garden now. Autumn, it seems, has come at last. Over the Guy Fawkes weekend, there were reports on iSpot and Flickr of red admirals and hoverflies visiting the sun-lit ivy, but, in my garden at least

Although autumn hangs heavier in the air with each day, it only takes a brief break in the clouds to bring shy wildlife back out into the open. So it was on Friday last week when I headed for the horticultural delights of North Woolwich. Here

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

fence was an alien country. I knew there were houses over there somewhere, in the next street, but they were all but invisible through the nettles, living and dead plum trees and sprawling ivy.Ironic, then, that our garden, when we moved in, was just

or planting a shrub or tree, now’s the time to do it.There’s a small selection of fruiting plants in my garden, namely holly, guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), dog rose  (Rosa glauca) and ivy. All were planted as bare-root shrubs last autumn, except the ivy