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It boggles my mind to consider how many millions of tonnes of horticultural material must be shipped around the globe each year. And with the plants and soil come the insects. We are lucky in the UK in that we have a relatively cool temperate

of those from the local Chinese takeaway; I also use them for 'show and tell' sessions. They've found a 'lizardy' thing whilst digging up the end of the garden, and wonder what it is.Inside the chow mein box, curled up in some soil is a tiny newtlet

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

sodden sponge in the four or five years they have been embedded in the moist soil. Our plot is at the bottom of a gentle slope, and since this is heavy London clay, we are lucky as the lower beds are very rarely in danger of drought, even in mid summer

feared. The really sharp cold of last week had lifted slightly and the soil was not frozen solid. In fact it was nearly as friable as normal. We just don't get hard winters in London any more. As we lowered the small cardboard box, which previously held

in the moist soil is a wireworm. I know these are supposed to be notorious garden and agricultural pests, but like so many insects, I can't really treat them as pests unless they reach pest proportions. A few of last year's potatoes had small holes in them

later in the year.Next we filled in the area around the fibreglass with topsoil, logs, rocks and pot shards to give the pond edges texture, sheltering crevices and support. We landscaped the soil between the liner and sleeper frame, and filled the pond

I have cats. Every so often I have to live with the guilt that they kill the local wildlife. It's usually one of the mice breeding in the compost heaps or a blue-tit fledgling. The main hunter is the black and white one; lovely and soft and over

of woodlice, and a pleasing variety of worms, but the most numerous invertebrates were centipedes. These were the long thin, many- and short-legged Haplophilus (or similar) species. They have lots of short legs for pushing through the soil, a bit like

After writing an article on how and why to keep a garden wildlife diary for BBC Gardener's World Magazine, I've been invited to go electronic and turn it into a blog. My handwriting is atrocious so maybe this will be a good way of keeping the diary