The Wildlife-friendly Garden in April

Three cheers for April! There are likely to be days this month when the sun's warmth seeps under your skin and when the birds just can't stop themselves from singing.

Then again, there might be other days when it feels like winter all over again. As Ogden Nash, the poet, said:

"April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger"

But none of that can stop the lengthening days, and key activities in the garden at this time of year include seed sowing and potting on. There's such a thrill in propagating plants from scratch, and it is so cheap. A pack of seeds usually costs little over £2 and a bag of peat-free compost is usually £4-£5, and for that you can produce a bed-full of wildlife-friendly plants.

The biggest risk when growing seeds is 'damping off', the dreaded fungal disease where your seedlings grow and then suddenly keel over. Avoiding that is all about having clean compost, good circulation of air, and not getting the soil in the pots over-wet, although of course they shouldn't dry out, either. But I bet even Monty Don loses some of his plants to damping off - it's all part of the process.

Our featured activity this month is to build a Bee B&B. You just need to find - or make - a rudimentary, open fronted box about 15cm deep. I didn't do carpentry at school, so I just make it up as I go along, as you might be able to tell!

Then it's just a case of packing in 'tubes' - old bamboo canes cut into 15cm lengths can be good, or use blocks of wood with holes drilled in them. The tiny ones in this picture are reeds, which have tiny holes for tiny bees.

These are then the nesting tunnels for several types of solitary bee.

As with so many things to do for wildlife, there are just a few key facts that, once you know them, increase your chances of success massively. So, with bee boxes, here are my top three tips:

• Face the box south in a sunny, sheltered position. The bees don't like it chilly.
• If you drill holes in wood, make sure the entrance holes are smooth, not splintered. Bees avoid holes where they might snag their precious wings.
• And if you use hollow plant stems such as bamboo, make sure the hole is all the way to the bottom - some are blocked part way through, and solitary bees can't tunnel.

Who knows, you might be so inspired that you end up with something like this!

Adrian is too modest to admit it, but the second edition of his RSPB Gardening for Wildlife book has just been published. The first one won the Garden Media Guild award; eight years on, this second edition has had a full re-write, loads of new pictures, 60 extra pages, 100 extra wildlife-friendly plants to try. And it looks fantastic, if we say so ourselves!