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What a glorious Sunday in the garden yesterday, and driving my daughter to school at 7.30 this morning the temperature was already 23°C and rising. It probably didn't fall much below that all night, and though a bit restless for me the greenhouse

later. Put a few bits of broken pot over the drainage hole to stop compost washing away while allowing excess water to drain.Fill your large pot up to about two-thirds full of compost. Use a half-and-half blend of John Innes No.3 and multi

dove and other ground feeders below.5. Top up the bird bathA fresh water supply is vital for garden birds, so I keep my bird bath and other large saucers topped up with water. These become frozen on cold nights, so I pop out with the boiling water left

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

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

to be relatively common. And second they have to have some impact on humans: they have to be pretty or sinister, pest or helper, biter or worth eating. In other words, they have to get noticed. Tachina fera is large, but it has the secretive life style of searching

long trusses dripping with fruits like my 'Gardener's Delight' and other greenhouse varieties, beefsteak tomatoes set just a handful of fruits per truss, and sometimes just two or three. Greedy? No, I don't think I'm being unreasonable in expecting

to deal with a large area of weeds is to use it for a year to get yourself started. But don't leave it there for any longer or you'll end up with the same problem a few years down the line.I've now almost got rid of the carpet at the far end, and I've been

the right plant for the right place can be a difficult task, and the reality is that often the site we have is far from ideal.Take the left-hand border in my garden. A beautiful silver birch sits close to the boundary fence, but at about 10m or more

will send the leaves tumbling to the ground.Slow-growing Japanese maples, particularly those with dissected leaves, make perfect small trees for patio pots. I've grown acers in pots on my patio for about six years now, using large, heavy terracotta pots