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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.

poppies appears early in the year, forming neat rosettes. It is overtaken by spring performers such as tulips, anchusa and sweet rocket.But suddenly, without warning, the poppy thrusts up fat buds, wreathed in hairy cases until, one morning, the first case

:Bluebell, bugle, crab apple, daffodil, flowering cherry and currant, forget-me-not (Myosotis), hawthorn, hellebore (Helleborus corsicus, H. foetidus), pulmonaria, pussy willow, rhododendron, rosemary, viburnum, thrift (Armeria maritima).Spring flowers

Nectar BarAt Berryfields, we have made what we called the Nectar Bar alongside our big pond. Butterflies are among the more beautiful visitors we hope to attract, but all nectar-drinking creatures are welcome here.Any garden created for wildlife

again, I’ve been dreaming about a big, leafy, watery garden. But why three ponds? Well, they would be of different sizes and depths, and therefore attract a wide range of wildlife. I would dig a large, deep pond, a medium-sized pond and a small, shallow

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

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

slightly irritated when I read one of the kids' story books, in which someone discovers a frog or toad in the garden and their subsequent quest to find a suitable aquatic home for its release. Amphibians only go into water to breed in spring. Most