Protect your plants from cold snaps with home-made cloches

Plastic bottle cloches protecting lettuce and pea shoots

GAP Photos/Anna Omiotek-Tott

IN MY garden, bulbs such as snowdrops are coming up. Every year, I wonder if spring is arriving earlier due to climate change.

One study from 2006 found that many signs of spring, such as plant species unfurling their leaves, had been hastened by 7.5 days across Europe in the previous 30 years (Global Change Biology, doi.org/b7vmgk). And research published this week has found that UK plants are flowering nearly a month earlier than they did before the mid-1980s, probably due to warmer temperatures from January to April.

You might think that warmer weather would be welcomed by gardeners, …