Viva Greenpeace!

It's hard to be positive when you come across stories like Goodbye Froggie. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read them. You just have to read them, think a bit and then do something. No one's expecting you to go charging around the Southern Ocean like the rainbow warriors of Greenpeace are doing right now. There is, as they say, more than one way to save a whale. Or a frog, come to think of it. This is what 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' is all about: direct action you can do at home.

Take the poor frog. In this green, wet country of ours there used to be lots of frogs, toads and newts. Witches didn't have to look far when they needed a bit of amphibian for a spell, they just looked in the nearest patch of weeds. There were ponds and streams everywhere, full of green, slippery creatures.

The modern witch has to look much harder, because there are less amphibians, and there are less amphibians because there are fewer places for them to live. Our growing towns and cities cover land with tarmac and bricks and concrete. We use strimmers and weedkillers to get rid of vegetation. Even in the countryside you have to look quite hard for a pond because people have filled them in.

So what can you do? Here's a clue: in our tiny city garden we have anything between five and ten frogs. They live in the flowerbeds around the world's smallest pond, feasting on the thousands of slugs that live in the garden. They're protected from local cats by the thick, messy foliage that we never cut back. We don't use any poisons. In fact a lot of the time we don't do much. It's a bit of a jungle, but paradise if you're a snail, a slug or an urban frog.

The gardening chapter of 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' has lots of tips for the greener gardener, so why not check it out?