Nature’s spiky deterrents–thorns, spines and prickles–may be quick to catch us out, but they can also prove to be a useful ally, discovers Laura Parker

October brings the first of the frosts, bewitching mist, the turning of leaves and a host of otherworldly visitors, finds John Lewis-Stempel

Britain is a country mercifully bereft of threatening fauna–or so you might believe. John Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters

John and Jenny Brett have created an all-year garden design at St Mary’s, combining formal plant structures with colourful insect-friendly perennials, but in winter, when dusted with white and dancing with shadows, the garden shimmers

In a John Behan bronze, collector Jacqueline O’Donovan, a child of the Irish diaspora, can sense the desperation of a starving people forced to flee their land

Unfairly maligned as a sneaky troublemaker, the quicksilver ferret is a characterful, curious and highly intelligent creature–with fascinating regal and cultural trappings to boot, writes Octavia Pollock