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at the bottom of ponds. They're also fond of compost bins, so be careful if forking over the heap. Frogs enter a state of torpor in winter, rather than hibernation, rising from their slumber in search of food on warm days.How to helpFloat a tennis ball

to deadhead half of it after flowering so that I would get a second flush around now but got distracted and now it is too late. Oh well, there is always next year.My second mistake was one of omission: there is an area around my pond consisting of a series

and a pond. Every year a colony of buff-tailed bumblebees nests beneath the neighbours' shed and feeds on my mum's flowers, I'm sure the butterflies do the same. My dad has a nest of common carder bumblebees in his ramshackle allotment compost heap, just

blues, and speckled woods.The hoverflies have appeared in earnest, and bumbles, wasps and solitary bees are everywhere. There is an audible hum, usually only heard in June. They are all squabbling over the raspberry flowers. Pond-skaters are frolicking

with some wood, landscape fabric and pond liner, and transformed the dead space on my shed into a wildlife oasis.High up above our cities, green roofs provide a refuge for endangered black redstarts, wild bees, butterflies and other insects, giving them a

startled in Dorset was probably a slow worm or grass snake (pictured above). These benign species often turn up in gardens, mostly in the south of England, and very rarely in the north. They bask in rockeries, feed in ponds and breed in compost heaps

for birds too, particularly in winter when other sources may be frozen.Attracting birds to your gardenMaking a nesting area for birds on a pond video project.Making fat cakes for birds.Making a bird box.Bird baths blog by Adam Pasco.Making a green roof for a

to reassure her that it was probably too small to drink her blood, and anyway it was a good sign that the water was unpolluted. She was not impressed and flicked it away indignantly. I'm not going to get her pond-dipping again for some time.

with sunbathing beasts: shieldbugs, spiders, ladybirds, bees, and two cats nestled in at the bottom. The newts have returned to the pond too; four of them were swimming about in there. These are the regular denizens of my garden, but two unusual visitors were a

I don't know how long the frisbee had been lying there, but when I broke it free from the stiff frosted grass beside the pond, it left a circle of tell-tale yellowing stems and roots beneath. When I turned it over I was maybe expecting some torpid