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lesson:             What does a herbivore eat? Plants.              What does a carnivore eat? Anything it can get.After the harlequin ladybird first arrived in Essex five years ago, there was a great media hoo-hah about its potential to wreak ecological

's wearing flared trousers.Some UK web sites suggest that the Plant Health Department of the Food, Environment Research Agency (part of DEFRA) should be contacted if you find this bug, but it is now too well established to consider any attempts at confinement

with water.We're not quite all the way there. The pond is full of water and has already taken on a deep green bloom as the algae and microbes start to establish an ecological balance, but the pond surround needs to be planted up and after the soil has settled

. It didn't move, other than the odd belch and my 2½-year-old son looked at it askance, not completely convinced it was a living creature. I could hear his mind working - it was much more likely to be a curiously sculpted rock, or a stunted plant root. We

. There is nothing about taking out Leyland cypresses, unless, perhaps by so doing I "increase the proportion of native plant and tree species". Ah, but I can get the pupils to build a hibernaculum for amphibians with the logs and retain the dead wood for timber

of the patio plants. A mouse nibbles seed heads in one of the borders. There is a Mediterranean bouquet garnis smell in the hot air. Lots of garden thyme in tonight's risotto.Thursday 12th A nuthatch visits the breakfast patio, but I cannot make out what

are liable to flooding, and nest, brood and roosting queens are all vulnerable to mould and fungal disease.The most important thing we, as gardeners, can do to help bumblebees at this time of year is not to fuss too much about nectar plants, but to make sure