In summer I wander into the garden to hear the buzz of the bees and hoverflies and the squabbling of sparrows and starlings on my bird table. Today, I have watched fledgling jackdaws leaving their nest in next door’s chimney for the first time.

We do try to add as many native plants to the gardens, we want it to be our own personal nature reserve.

So it is exciting to read Shaun McCoshum’s Natural Habitats and Wildlife Gardening (Princeton), as it shows that our love of UK’s back gardens stretches across the Atlantic to North America. It’s all about inviting nature into your back garden, whether you are in Moston or Boston, Chorley or Connecticut.

While there are similarities in attracting dragonflies, butterflies and birds into our gardens on this side of the Pond, we don’t often see ring-necked snakes or blue jays.

Shaun is keen to stress that we can recreate wild areas in our gardens to help those native plants and creatures whose numbers have declined although to do a proper job you would need a garden bigger than our street. And yet, if we have five gardens like mine in a street then we have made a bigger place for wildlife to land.

And those ox-eye daisies in my garden are the same as you see lining the motorways around Lancashire.

I often say that some of our passionate volunteers are simply seeking  to work on bigger gardens than their own, so gardening at Brockholes and Mere Sands Wood must be terribly exciting. They are an amazing bunch of people and they do so much for wildlife in the region.

Shaun appears to share the excitement and Natural Habitats and Wildlife Gardening is all about looking at how you can create habitats right outside your door. He says: “Most gardeners only have control over their own property, while most wildlife is moving around with no regard to legal boundaries. Therefore, it is important to consider a garden as it relates to the surrounding landscape.”

I really like that and I like this book, because I am interested in how nature lovers work in other parts of the world. In many cases, it isn’t that different to what we do – insect boxes, bird tables, leaving out water for mammals.

Just one thing, I am not too sure we are ready to introduce wolf, moose and grizzly bear onto the West Pennine Moors just yet.