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We have a rambler rose just outside the back door, 'Félicité et Perpétue'. No matter how hard I cut it back, it still fights vigorously with the wooden slats of the featheredge fence, tries to smother the garden table and viciously rakes at my

It rained on Sunday, so what better way to spend the day than planting roses? Well, I went and played Power Rangers in the bushes in Dulwich Park with 3-year-old, while my partner did the planting. She'd ordered them at Chelsea, and we'd almost

into trouble. Especially as last weekend, I did a bit of, well, tidying in the garden. It was limited, however, to clipping a few stray rose branches that had suddenly shot out at eye height. And I picked up a few windfall apples to see which ones I could

on hawthorn, blackthorn, rowan and plum. Plenty of those in nearby gardens. I let it out of the back door at 10 o'clock at night and it rose up into the darkness, its ghostly colour flickering off into the void.

I'm always slightly perplexed when I hear someone talking about woodlice as if they were garden pests. My garden is full of the critters, but I've never even had need to raise my voice at them. They crowd around the flowerpots, under logs and stones

I think we have foxes living under our garden shed. I first noticed the scratching in the soil a week or so ago. It didn't look like very much excavation had occured and the hole didn't appear to go very far. But now we have more earth-moving going

. It was on one such former orchard that my hosts had put their house. I spent many happy hours between pre-wedding social engagements, mooching about outside. The 'garden' was little more than a cleared paddock, roughly mown by tractor-drawn brush cutter a few

its food in Scandinavia runs out and it heads south-west in search of better forage. We have plenty of that round here, for the waxwing is a berry feeder and gardens hereabouts are full of pyracantha, hawthorn, rowan, berberry and rose hips. The place

To Soicherons, Villars-Dompierre, in the Cote d'Or region of France for two weeks and the wildlife here is subtly different to that in East Dulwich. For one thing we are surrounded by large flowery meadows, hedges dripping with Mirabelle plums