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I recently spent a few days in Barcelona. The orange trees growing there were laden with fruit and looked stunning in the February sunshine. I loved seeing them growing outside in the streets, though admit to having felt a pang of jealousy on behalf

It's nearly Twelfth Night, so millions of Christmas trees will be disrobed and thrown away. Some will end up in landfill, while others will be dumped on roadsides, waste land and canal tow paths. Only some will be re-used, or recycled into bark

. Undeterred, I thought I’d try something else for 2013: yew, Taxus baccata. I’m very fond of yew; I love seeing gnarled old trees in graveyards, exploring the patterns and fissures of their bark. Left alone, yews can grow for centuries. One specimen

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

Last week I found vine weevils on the rim of the pot my orange tree lives in. It stands next to my 'nursery' of seedlings, so potentially hundreds of plants could be affected. The adults cause little damage, save for a few nibbles on the edges

Garden Birdwatch.Birds will only visit gardens where they feel safe. The ideal bird-friendly garden has a mixture of trees and shrubs for birds to shelter in, a lawn from which ground-feeding birds can forage for ants and worms, and a wild, grassy area

Last summer, while doing a spot of gardening at my mum’s, I was disturbed by the sound of chainsaws as tree surgeons pollarded a huge oak in a neighbouring garden. At first I thought the tree was being chopped down, and I watched as men the size

shallow to sustain a tree and it only gets sunshine for two hours a day. But if you have better conditions, now's a great time to plant bare-root apple trees. Many varieties will fruit within a couple of years, won't need much attention (unless you train

-friendly garden should have a tree for them to perch in, and lots of dense shrubbery and climbers where they can hide from predators.Looking at the bare bones of my garden I can see why the birds aren't coming. There are lots of climbers, which, once they have

, but your neighbours will hate you.The news broke this week that a Plymouth resident has upset all of his neighbours by planting 16 leylandii trees in his front garden and leaving them to grow, completely obscuring the house. At one time the hedge would have