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I recently had the pleasure of meeting Europe’s smallest bird. I would have expected such an occasion to take place in a pine forest or a large rural garden, but this chance encounter occurred on a scrubby piece of park just behind the Hackney Road

Last week, Butterfly Conservation published a report called The State of Britain's Larger Moths 2013. It makes a depressing read, demonstrating a marked decline in the number of our larger moths over the last 40 years. The survey, conducted

Two years, I felt the need to grow a local, native plant in my garden. I gathered rosehips from a field rose at the edge of a nearby canal, soaked them in water and sowed the seed in coarse compost.The pots sat in a corner of my patio, doing nothing

or planting a shrub or tree, now’s the time to do it.There’s a small selection of fruiting plants in my garden, namely holly, guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), dog rose  (Rosa glauca) and ivy. All were planted as bare-root shrubs last autumn, except the ivy

blown away by their scent. I also like Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, which produces clusters of tiny rose-pink flowers on bare stems from October to March. However, I’ve seen too many viburnums growing in ‘municipal’ settings to want to grow them in my