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of about 20 white eggs. Each egg is beautiful under the microscope, squat, almost spherical with 25 to 30 fluted grooves running top to bottom.And shortly before posting this, I've just walked into the front garden to find a male meadow brown butterfly

across the dark meadows towards Lower Halstow and the North Kent Swale marshes. My uncle was trying out his new gadget, a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder and he was hanging out of the window with the microphone as these eerie noises drifted over

.Atonement. Ghastly film, great gardens - lots of meadows and waving grasses.Any more?

, his speciality is perennial meadows. He studies plant groupings from around the world and then recreates them for use in urban parks and landscapes. One of the pictures he showed made a great impression on me: it was of a recreation of a Tibetan yak

)5. Go outside and admire.Nothing terribly complicated and yet the effect is extraordinarily wonderful.This meadow is, admittedly on the big scale and has been planted by garden designer Ivan Hicks in the ground surrounding Butterfly World and Future

stercoraria. It's scientific name means, rather unsurprisingly 'dung-eating dung-inhabiter' and it's one of those insects that is very easy to overlook in the garden. In a grazing meadow they are obvious and multitudinous insects, speckling the fresh cow pats

rump, dark tail, thrush size. Ah! Fieldfare. I don’t remember when I last saw one of these — 35 years ago? I always associate them with large flocks settling in the grazing meadows of my uncle’s farm near Sittingbourne, Kent. As their name suggests

favourite, the meadow cranesbill is a perennial that flowers in June and grows well in an open spot. Taller stems can grow to 90cm high.Geranium pratenseForget-me-nots will pop up everywhere to create a frothy blue cloud, but are easy to pull out if you have

tufted economy blend.Last year was not a good year as there was too much rain and general bleariness for anything much to thrive. Vegetables drowned and fruit never really came to much, roses were battered by showers and meadows were flattened. Thank

and widespread, but more an insect of rough flowery grassland, verges, meadows and commons than of domestic gardens. The larvae burrow in plant stems, but only wild flowers so it's never a pest. It's easy to see how this noble-looking beetle got its scientific