The following is a genuine experience I had earlier this week. I was busy in the garden, minding my own business, when I heard a woman's voice, loud and clear, the other side of the hedge.

"Aren't they big and lovely?!" she said.

"Huge!" said a man's voice.

"It's because they're in a sunny position."

Ah. Now I twigged. They were talking about my sunflowers!

I've…

Back in May, I revealed my garden boudoir, the place where the birds come to wash and brush up and make themselves beautiful. We don't admit that it is made out of an upturned dustbin lid because the birds think it is a bijou washroom.

Only a couple of metres away is something that has become another hit with those birds wanting to look their best. Let's call it The Powder Room, but between you and me it's just a…

Let’s start with a photo of a garden bird…or at least it is if you’re a warden or lighthouse keeper on a remote island!

Yes, I’ve been on my holidays, following the yearning to go and see Puffins and Gannets and all the other wonderful wildlife of Northumberland and Lothian (my Gannet above was on Bass Rock).

But right up there in the list of experiences (for which I admit a touching-distance…

Last week I mentioned that my bats were enjoying circling over my cornfield wildflower glade, so I thought it was nigh time to show you how the glade is looking.

It was rotavated and sown in February on an area that had been under a dense thicket of half-dead apple trees and damson and plum suckers. I figured it had been so dark under there for years that it was worth just going for it without waiting to see if there…

The only direct contact I’ve ever had with a bat was when I worked in Woolworths and one day a live Long-eared Bat turned up, exhausted, in the pick ‘n’ mix.

How it got into a high street store in full daylight remains a mystery, but I was known as the ‘wildlife boy’ and so I got called over.

I picked it up, put it in a cardboard box and took it home, not banking on the fact that it would…

The RSPB team which created, set up and ran the stand at this year's BBC Gardeners World Live have now sent me the photos to share with you all.

"Apologies for the delay," Claire wrote in her email. "We were in the NEC for 13 hours on the last day setting it up and we were all a bit delirious!" Anyone who has been involved with setting up something like this will know how they feel!

The team…

Today I was hoping to be able to share with you photos from Claire, April and the RSPB Events team of their final masterpiece at BBC Gardeners World Live. You may remember they gave us a glimpse of wardrobes, kitchen sinks and empty milk bottles leaving us to imagine how that could all be turned into a thing of beauty and wonder.

Well, internet connections appear from Birmingham appear to be limited, so you've got today…

This rather gorgeous speckled little thing came visiting my garden boudoir this week for the first time.

It's a sight that makes my heart sing because it means that a pair of Robins has been successful, either in the garden or nearby. They've managed to build a nest, lay the eggs, raise the chicks and get them to the point where at least this one youngster has popped out into the big wide world.That's no mean feat…

When it comes to having a good wash and scrub up, my garden is currently the place to be. Take a look at this:

If you can make it out, it is a Blue Tit getting itself in a right lather. See how it tosses its head about violently in order to create as much splash as possible. Oh, how it rekindles happy memories of bath-time as a kid.

The bedraggled result was this:

It's a wonder their feathers ever get back into…

Although the BBC will turn their attention to Chelsea next week (the Flower Show, not the football team) in a blaze of publicity and celebrities, our hard-working Events Team of staff and volunteers have been at it again in their secret bunker in Bedfordshire, pulling together their feature garden ready for Gardeners World Live.

This annual giant of a show is at the NEC, Birmingham, from 11-14 June, and I know many of…

A few weeks ago I was delighted to meet up with the Henry Johnson from the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species, who has the fantastic job title of Hedgehog Officer as well as being upliftingly enthusiastic.

He helps run a project called Hedgehog Street, which is a simple campaign focusing to get people to pledge to cut holes in their fences to allow Hedgehogs to wander between gardens. In the box-like world of our gardens…

If you live in one of the fruit growing areas of the country, or even if you just have a fruit tree in the garden, I'm sure you're currently enraptured by the sight - and smell - of all the blossom.

I've inherited about 80 apple trees in my new garden (way too many for the size of the garden, and a recipe for all sorts of fruit-tree disease), but they do look glorious. Here's a Bramley this week:

This last few weeks there has been little tapping noises going on all over the house.

The 'culprit' was my resident Blue Tit, aggrieved to find a rival Blue Tit right in the heart of his territory. Everywhere my Blue Tit went around the house, it would find its competitor popping up. Each time my Blue Tit went on the attack, the other would fight back.

Yes, the curse of reflections had struck, something that…

I promised myself that I wouldn't plant anything this year, the first year of creating my new garden. This year was going to be one for clearing, assessing, laying out the structure and getting rid of the pernicious weeds.

However, the urge within me to grow is so strong that I've succumbed. I don't know if you suffer from it too - it is that sheer joy of planting something, nurturing it and seeing the glories that…

This last winter, tree surgeons cleared over 70 trees from the garden I have just taken on, which on the face of it sounds like ecological sacrilege. However, with over 30 of them being giant leylandii already starting to fall onto neighbouring properties and the rest being an impenetrable tangle of sick and untended fruit trees, no longer bearing fruit, it was a job that had to be done.

The extra light will now allow…

Regular readers will know that I try to post each Friday. Sadly, last week proved to be not possible, following the unexpected death of my dad.

It was my dad, with support from my mum, who got me into nature from a very early age. Dad had been a birdwatcher since the 1950s, an age where there weren't that many folk doing it nor the information and nature reserves to go with it. He would stay at bird observatories such…

Birds have always amazed me, but there's something about what happens now in spring that, for me, defies belief. Prompted by the gathering day-length and guided by their complex internal genetic coding, they set about creating artistic masterpieces - nests.

This week, my Robins, Dunnocks and Blackbirds have all been on the intense hunt for nesting materials, but I was thrilled to see that my Song Thrushes are too…

Last week I received a very interesting phone message from a lady who had had a bad experience with a squirrel-proof feeder. (My apologies to the lady concerned for being so rubbish with mobile phones that I accidentally deleted her message and so was unable to ring her back to thank her. Those who know me would not be surprised at this latest technological mishap!).

Her problem had been with the same feeder I have,…

One of the things I inherited in my new garden is a swimming pool.

"Wow! That's so posh," people say to me. But then they see it!

It was apparently built in the 1970s, but the problem was that Frogs (and other things) fell into the chlorinated water and died.

So they stopped using it and, by the time I bought it, it was a green stinking soup where the only option was to cover my nose and pump it out…

I love feeding the birds. It's better than TV for me, watching to see who's visiting and what they're up to.

Of course most of what they eat is seed I've bought in from the RSPB. But I do like the idea of my garden providing some of it too.

So this year I've got the bit between my teeth, and this week I've been sowing a cornfield.

First step, prepare the ground. I'm sowing a large area - 300…

You know those teenagers who seem to eat like a horse but never put an ounce of weight on (I remember the days!)? Well, watching the birds at the feeders today was just like that.

In particular, my male Blackcap seemed to spend almost all the day sat in the fat feeder inside the squirrel guard - peck, peck, peck. I thought he might get to the point where he wouldn't be able to get out.

Much of the time he had…

Regular readers will know that I have just had major tree work done in my new garden - 30 soaring leylandii that were poised to crush my neighbours' property have had to be removed, given that four had already fallen in the gales last winter.

It still leaves me 350 trees and shrubs in the garden, and that includes some lovely semi-mature trees such as three English oaks, a small-leaved lime and a walnut.

What I…

On your marks, get set....

Yes, the moment has come yet again to take up your prime position, next to the patio doors or peering out from the kitchen window, eyes peeled, feeders full, recording sheet at the ready.

It's time to count your birds, along with half a million other folk who take up the challenge in what I think must be one of the best bits of citizen science anywhere in the world. Big Garden Birdwatchers…

The removal of dangerous leylandii from my new garden continues apace, and today my tree surgeon came to the house to tell me he'd found something under the rotting bole of a dead 300-year old pear tree.

There it was, poking up out of the ground, all large and white and fleshy.

For those who like their Star Wars, it was like a miniature version of one of the films' baddies, Jabba the Hutt, who is depicted as a…

Sometimes in the garden there's nothing for it but to get physical!

Who needs to pay gym fees when there are thickets to clear, ailing and overcrowded trees to be felled, branches to drag to be shredded...

...and then mounds of shreddings (six foot high in places) to be redistributed around the garden as mulches and pathways.

Yes, the heavy work to start to restore my new garden has begun. The idea is to…