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A few weeks ago I wrote about trees for small gardens. Among the comments (well, to be honest, 33% of the comments) was a request from Daphne for very, very small trees - "very small being up to three metres".Tricky. Three metres is barely a shrub

The mullein moth caterpillars in my garden are still small, but they're guaranteed to increase in size by the day. These little critters - welcomed by wildlife enthusiasts and hated by gardeners - munch their way through verbascum, figwort

The very mention of the word 'tree' causes some gardeners to twitch nervously. Who can possibly have space in a small, modern garden for a tree, let alone two? Well, I think everyone has, provided they choose the right ones. I've enjoyed reading

this method for sowing seeds saved from your own dahlia plants at the end of the previous season.10cm pot or seed trayMulti-purpose compost Dahlia seedsPlant label and pencilClear polythene bag and rubber band (for pot) or propagator lid (for seed tray

small picture-winged fly, Rhagoletis meigenii (pictured above), in London's Battersea Park in June 2000. At the time this pretty little insect was thought to feed on the native Berberis vulgaris, but was believed to be extinct in Britain, having been

That warm Saturday (April 26th) brought out the first butterflies of the year: holly blue, small tortoiseshell and speckled wood. They're all common garden species, but I always get a thrill when I see any of them.The female holly blue

about gardens and dream of seasons as yet unborn. There's a vast choice of stuff out there to keep us amused, from newspaper garden supplements and magazines to books both large and small. I have shelves full of them; some old and some new. How

I have spent the last week on the small, but unbelievably beautiful, island of Colonsay off the west coast of Scotland. I apologise to those of you in the midlands who have been braving flash floods but the weather here has been stunning. Long sunny

to kill. But I've started to feel some very untoward thoughts about a certain visitor to our garden. The sparrowhawk is a huge creature, with beautiful regal plumage. But rather like the excessively good-looking human, it has a less attractive side. I

these wonderful creatures in my back garden. South London is now about the only place in the UK where you can regularly see these awesome monsters. My supposition is that when the housing boom spread across the area 100 to 150 years ago, it was one of the most