Search - Articles

to germinate, I'll put the pot straight outside and leave it be. Who knows, in spring I could go out and find my own Hackney field rose growing in the garden.

chaff is just lazily missing the right notes.Greenfinches irritate me on the bird table - all that mess and spitting - but I do love their wheezy song. A sure sign of spring, I heard the first one of the year last week. But until now I didn't know what

boost local insect populations by not using bug sprays and being less tidy in autumn (providing insects with somewhere to shelter over winter will ensure they survive to breed in spring). Planting native trees and shrubs will also provide food

site. It might spend the winter in the compost bin making the whole heap smell of mouse, ready for nest-searching bumblebee queens in spring. I hope so.

.I love the way home-grown salads start off as a meagre collection of leaves in spring, then steadily grow as tomatoes, broad beans and other ingredients are ready to harvest. The watercress growing in my pond is always the first leaf crop I pick, followed

raised bed, as you need to consider drainage issues and the additional weight put on the shed. But it can be done without buying expensive kits. And, while the plants won't put on much growth before spring, I think the roof looks great. The shed has

if it attracts breeding frogs next spring.

when I see it. Its bark is decorated with a thick crust of lichen, and lots of birds, especially thrushes, eat its fruit. It’s beautiful. Not only would my crab apple provide fruit for birds in winter, but its spring flowers would attract bees

guises of the harlequin. I met my first pine ladybird last spring, thanks to a heavy gust of wind blowing it out of a tree on to the pavement I was walking along, and I once found the larvae of tiny Scymnus frontalis (which somehow resembled Dougal

deep for mating frogs, and a touch on the shady side. Frogs tend to prefer mating in the shallows of ponds with a fair amount of sunlight, where the frogspawn can warm up quickly in the spring sunshine. The frogs local to my mum have always mated