Wildlife watch: Great tit

The common frog (Rana temporaria) is a common garden species, especially for those with or near a pond. It has long stripey legs, large eyes and wet, smooth skin. It breeds in ‘spring’, which can be as early as December in Cornwall but as late as April in Scotland. However most spawn is laid in February and March.

One great way to wake up from our collective holiday haze is to get focused on cleaning up and clearing out.

While the holiday season can be a time of excess, once the season has ended, it's a great time to declutter. Whether you’re making space to store holiday decor or eager to do a full clean-out once the festivities close, it’s a time to make your home feel cozy and comfortable. 

If you think you know all of the «rules» involved with decorating a bedroom, you may want to think again!

There's something magical about discovering the perfect thrift store find. It's partially luck, partially strategy, and partially dedication to the hunt. As we roll into 2024, we wondered: what are the thrifting trends for the new year? What secondhand home decor items should thrifting enthusiasts be nabbing before everyone else does? To get the inside scoop, we turned to two professional treasure hunters: interior designers Jason Saft and Alex Bass. Read on for their suggestions on what to thrift in 2024.

Karen Delahay

Wildlife gardening has many benefits. By growing plants, digging a pond and creating other habitats, such as log piles and compost heaps, we can provide homes for wildlife that would otherwise be homeless. There are around 30 million gardens in the UK. Potentially, if enough of us garden with wildlife in mind we can help slow down or even reverse declines of some species, like hedgehogs, right across the country.

Listen up as Alan Titchmarsh, Kate Bradbury and the team at Gardeners’ World share some of their garden favourites. From plants for vibrant winter flowers, to the best Christmas gifts for gardeners and wildlife to spot in your garden this winter.

Also known as the wood mouse, the field mouse is a small, sandy brown mammal with big ears, big eyes and a long tail. Britain’s most widespread rodent, it’s common in woodland and grassland and also frequents gardens, even in very urban areas. It eats seeds (including bird seed), plants, caterpillars, earthworms, fruit, fungi and other foods such as cat biscuits, which you might leave out for hedgehogs. It caches food to store for leaner times, although these caches are often ‘forgotten’ – you may find piles of seed husks in a corner of your shed or beneath some membrane you have laid down to suppress weeds. If the seeds are large enough – for example if you find a pile of plum stones as I often do on my allotment, you may spot teeth marks on those that have been eaten. Different rodents leave different types of teeth mark on seed husks, so with some careful investigation you should be able to identify the field mouse as your hoarder.

Do you want to support wildlife in your garden – but you don’t want a ‘wild’ looking garden? You’d like beautiful borders and gorgeous pots? Even, perhaps, a short neat lawn?

A regular visitor to our gardens, especially in urban areas, red foxes are orange-red in colour with a white throat, belly and chin, and a white-tipped tail known as a brush. Exceptional scavengers, they eat a huge variety of food, from carrion to earthworms and even berries, which is how they have become so successful at living among us. However, they’re known for taking pet rabbits and chickens and their eggs, as well as for raiding bins. This, along with digging holes, nesting under sheds and flattening plants and toppling garden ornaments when playing, can cause conflict with the people they live among.

The red admiral is a large butterfly with black and red wings with white spots along the tips of its forewings and blue markings at the base of its hindwings. A migrant butterfly travelling here from North Africa and continental Europe to breed in spring before the next generation returns in autumn, some red admirals now hibernate in the UK, and they emerge on mild days to feed on winter flowers. As such, they can be found feeding on garden flowers all year round.