Keep bird baths and greenhouse trays clean. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the difference between healthy visitors and winter woes. A quick scrub keeps plants and wildlife happy – and disease at bay. ●

Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’ Forgive me please because I have, in my youth, been a bit sneery about mahonias. I recognise that this was a mistake as they have an awful lot in their favour: colour at a

The past two years have provided areas of the UK, sometimes as far south as Cornwall, opportunities to enjoy the incredible show of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, a sight usually only experi

Winter may well be the most overlooked season of them all when it comes to appreciating nature’s joys. While it’s easy to take pleasure in the budding blooms of spring, summer’s resplendent blossoms a

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel

France may be synonymous with fromage, but the terroir of our green and pleasant land gives rise to all manner of magnificent varieties of our own, declares Tom Parker Bowles, who picks his favourites