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oxygen under ice), or it has very little leaf litter. If there aren't sufficient oxygenating plants in the pond, or it contains too much leaf litter (which releases noxious gases as it breaks down), or snow covers the surface and prevents the plants from

frosts.My garden in East London hasn't seen rain since before Christmas. We've had snow, of course, and the promise of rain - dark clouds, even a thunder storm, but no water (we did have a two minute shower last Friday but it by the time I recognised

increasing it’s a highly complex picture that does not suffer simple analysis. Most worrying, for me, is the observation that farmland birds are at their lowest ever recorded level, down by half since the 1970s. Now a report on some of our common ground

Nothing beats the warmth of the sun after a long spell of cold weather. Until recently, rain or snow has kept me indoors, thinking despondently of all the garden jobs waiting to be done.Now that temperatures are rising, so are my spirits. When I

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

name of glory of the snow, this bulb comes into flower early. In Devon I've seen it pushing its bright blue, white-centred stars up through snow in a little cultivated wood. It spreads every year and forms a glorious blue carpet beneath the trees

I love the snow we're having this week, but it does rather put paid to gardening. Harsh weather has made me all the more thankful for my lovely greenhouse - the only thing that's tempting me to the  bottom of the garden at the moment. After I took

are also on the rebound after the snow damage and I can see tight curled buds on the currant bushes. We're a bit pressed for time at the moment, and I just know the place will be a sea of weeds if we're not careful, and then we'll get a ticking off from

changes around the edge of global warming that are, perhaps, a more insidious threat. Bumblebees are well-adapted to cool climates, and they can happily overwinter under feet of snow, but the limiting factor on their spring foraging, during the all