THE TREE - they smell GOOD, make our living rooms into a grotto for a few weeks and occasionally stab us with their needles - why do we do this every year? Find the right tree for you and then make it a more sustainable tradition... FROSTED HISTORY The branches of the evergreen Conifer have been flailed about in celebration since the pagans danced with them and strung them up for the Winter solstice, and the Romans fought and lounged around them [...]
Talking terrariums with Madeleine and Will from Jar and Fern… Ok, a jar and a few plants - what exactly is a ‘terrarium’? So terrariums were actually invented in 1827 by a London Doctor called Nathaniel Ward, although people had been keeping plants in jars as early as 500 BC. Dr Ward invented them pretty much by accident after monitoring the life cycle of caterpillars and moths in a closed jar which had a bit of soil in the base. Little [...]
STEP INTO THEIR CLAWS If you’re a bird in winter these are your problems - there’s hardly any food about; your water supply becomes a block of ice; there are less places to hide as half the leaves have dropped and your predators are even hungrier; oh, and it’s minus degrees and all you’ve got to keep warm in is your own body fat - which means you’ve got to find food, expose yourself to predators, keep near to your flock, [...]
