The Shrewd Gardener

I saw a snippet in the paper that said the ‘Dr Who’ star is working on his green fingers, trying to keep his plants alive.
Then I found a bit more later on DigitalSpy

Herbal pesticides have been in use for thousands of years. Plants and herbs also have many medicinal uses and form an essential part of our every day lives.

We spent the morning trimming the mixed hedge in the front garden. It is a mix of Eleagnus, Holly and Buddleia. Not that unusual but what really surprised me was the number of Crickets we found.
I’ve identified them as the Speckled Bush Cricket [Leptophytes punctatissima] and the only ones we found were the females. [...]

The National Trust in the process of building a database of trees in the UK. This is quote a big project and there are lots of related links on the web as I’ve been finding.
The BBC have picked it up
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Plan for national tree database.
There are also links to [...]

* Euphorbia. It is a fascinating plant to grow and does well in poor ground. However, the sap is photo active. This means that if it gets on the skin and is exposed to sunlight it can cause burns.
* Rue Ruta graveolens is an unusual low growing evergreen herb with unusual lobed leaves. It has [...]

Have you ever seen any tired looking bees in you garden. Well, the RSPB are suggesting that you help them with a little sugar water.
Of course having plenty of nectar laden flowers in your garden would help too but this seems like an interesting idea. Why not give it a try next time you find [...]

According to this BBC report there are over 80,000 people waiting for allotment space in the UK.
As you would expect the situation is worse in the big cities with London’s borough of Camden offering a staggering 40 year wait. So make sure you put your grandchildren’s names down today.
Apparently about thirty percent of gardeners use [...]

You can be a shrewd gardener in many ways but what underpins it is knowledge and what to to with that knowledge.
You may be an indoor gardener, which I’ll confess now I’m not. You may be a greenhouse gardener or a vegetable gardener or a bonsai gardener.
Even if you specialise you still need to know [...]

Found this article on the BBC website. Yun-Yun Mao and Shuang-Quan Huang of Wuhan University in China have been researching how flowers have evolved to reduce the effects of rain on their pollen stores.
BBC – Earth News – Raindrops drive flower evolution.
As pollen is essential to flower reproduction it’s essential to protect it and it [...]

Sitting in Clissold Park in London,  it just looks like a great big garden.
There are flower beds, water features (OK. Two large ponds), play areas, wonderful trees and lots of grass.
There are great parks and gardens everywhere. Cambridge has a marvellous botanical garden, Ipswich has a great park and Derby has some lovely communal spaces [...]