A guide to spring for children - in pictures

Spring is great time to start looking at nature, as there’s something new to notice every day in even the teeniest garden or window box: new seeds sprouting, new leaves on the trees, new birds arriving from migration...
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

My Devon garden had a pond outside the kitchen window, so I’d know when Winter was over when I’d hear the soft croaking of frogs on a February night.
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

I love the bits of wildness that find their way into cities, ‘round the back’, ‘on the edge’ and ‘in between’...
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

The most ordinary wild plants, like willows and dandelions are the blessings of these snippets of feral wild.
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

I spent most Easters when I was little, in Radnorshire, feeding orphan lambs and then as a grown up kept sheep on my smallholding, mostly for the lamby tail factor! Mark added lapwings here too, I adore their zipping calls and dipping flight.
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

The biggest thrill of my childhood was finding birds' nests. My grandpa was genius at it. My heart still turns over at the sight of a thrush's eggs, the colour of sky, or a clutch of tiny blue tit eggs fragile as snowflakes.
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

When I was seven, my parents’ garden had three flowering cherries that would cover the lawn in thick, pink snow that I never tired of running through and rolling in. The Japanese are so right to have a special festival for blossom!
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR

Some of the happiest moments of my life have been planting seeds or pricking out seedlings. I started with my Dad, standing on an upturned bucket beside him in the greenhouse, planting tomatoes and coleus, and sweet williams and snapdragons.
Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PR