It’s taken me 34 years on planet earth to experience the thrill of flying a kite. I know I know, what on earth was I doing as a child! Sadly, it seems I lived an unfulfilled, kiteless childhood… Homemade heaven Earlier in the year my...

My kids absolutely love bugs. Anything small that scuttles, crawls, slivers or flies is right up their inquisitive and rather grubby street. It’s simply amazing how much joy and caring instinct the average garden snail can extract from a child....

Seaweed spends its whole life floating in seawater so is well adapted to being underwater, land plants have to put up with an occasional downpour but can generally get used to the dry. But what of those bits of land at the whim of the tide, the salt marshes...

Elder is a small tree with a whole load of uses. You can eat its berries (in moderation or cooked), use the dried out pith to clean watch parts and of course if you're a wizard you can use its wood to make an all-powerful wand (attention Harry Potter...

Our Head of Education, Families and Youth - Jim Wardill - has been out exploring the countryside with his two daughters. Here's his account of lichens in the Lakes: It’s the Easter holidays, we’re in the Lake District, and we're...

Imagine if you lived in pagan times when people sat hunched round fires in winter wondering if the summer sun would ever return. It’s no wonder they used to celebrate the coming of spring with a full blown festival . I can kind of appreciate...

At some point we all must have felt the sharp sting and lingering unpleasant tingle of the common nettle Urtica dioica (or indeed the urgency to find dock leaves to quell your little one’s shrieks of anguish!). Now’s your chance to take revenge...