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savoury plant in the beds, it also grows very well in cracks in the old concrete path.Later, while I'm admiring the constant nectaring business, I see there are several species. The red-tailed, Bombus lapidarius, is there in numbers, as too is the white

and was rewarded with the sight of Ledra aurita, a large and curiously shaped plant-hopper I'd never seen before. When I say large, I mean 15-18 mm long, so you can imagine how small most of the others are. It is immediately identified by the two large, broad, flat

The warm humid evenings of late July and early August have brought out the flying ants again. These are the very common black pavement ant, Lasius niger. A few years ago we had a nest in one of our large plant pots and it was amazing to see

-cum-quay, the size of a single bed has been so enthusiastically decorated with plant containers that the table and chair are lost in herbage.Several hoverflies and bumblebees are visiting the flowers. Chaffinches and sparrows flit noisily through the climbers

pallid nymphs make the white frothy gobs of cuckoo spit as they feed by sucking plant sap. There are dozens of them. And not only are they hopping about on the sunny foliage, they’re busy having sex too. Perhaps this is a bit ambitious, given that they

around the world, and released into the wild well outside of its original Asian homeland. This is because it is a very useful biocontrol agent, attacking the many non-native aphids and other plant lice that have themselves been moved about the globe

, commuters, joggers and roller bladers (even though there are signs saying not to, but hey - this is Paris). There's lots going on but I have to admit that there are not many signs of wildlife. The plants are fastidiously tended and the borders manicured

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

as it was long called is no longer, but there are some handsome black poplars which might just about be 250 years old. I'm not a poplar expert, but these must be the widely-planted cultivar, Populus x canadensis.We park our scooters up against the tree

or in the loft.Wandering back along the road to Pontoon Dock, the Docklands Light Railway station, I pause to look at a few plane trees planted in an equally bleak scheme along the pavement. We’re almost under the shadow of the railway viaduct here, so perhaps