Search - Articles

to more pickings for breakfast well into September.Just one job for next weekend...I must bury the tips of a couple of canes in the soil. These will root by a process called tip layering to produce new plants that I can give away to friends

fascinating, but very obscure book called 'The balance of nature, and modern conditions of cultivation: a practical manual of animal foes and friends for the country gentleman, the farmer, the forester, the gardener and the sportsman', written by one George

pretty widespread, especially around the midlands.Muntjac are not friends of the gardener and are quite capable of doing a fair bit of damage, not only to the soft shoots of emerging plants but can also strip bark from trees. You can deter them from

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

, then after a minute or two's pause the rear part of the procession dutifully walked around their crushed relatives/friends and carried on their way.We traced them back to the most amazing 'ball' of caterpillars which gradually unfurled to release those

of food, but what about the blue tits, great tits and other small birds? If only I could tell them how much high-energy food is waiting for them in my garden.No matter how hungry birds are, they'll only visit gardens in which they feel safe. A bird-friendly

"So what are these things on my lavender?" said the complete stranger, plonking down a jam jar full of beetles on the table. Ordinarily I would have been pleased, but slightly surprised, to be accosted like this, but Saturday 17th May was open

and toads. And what's on the menu for these visiting friends? Slugs!It's been a month of drizzly weather (a typical British summer, but that's another story), and just perfect for salads. The one saving grace is that I haven't needed to find another 30

I've dredged up from the back of my mind a statistic - something like 1 in 25 UK gardens with a pond will have a grass snake in it. Mine, unfortunately, is one of the 24 others without this lovely and fascinating reptile. So when I heard that a

Since I bought my shed, I've been itching to put a green roof on it, but I’ve always been put off by how difficult the task looks. Luckily, a friend asked if she could do the job for me, for a book she's writing. So last weekend, she turned up