i am at tatton park flower show celebrating the 20th anniversary. notjust the plants suffering in the dry weather, the wildlife and insects as well. and these need water to produce honey, but they can drown in deep water. if you want to leave out some water, a shallow trough of gravel with a shallow layer of water is best, because we haven't had enough rain around, there is not enough rain around, there is not enough standing water for them or many insects and wildlife and let's have a look at how dry it is. in june, this met office rainfall chart shows where the driest conditions have been. the deeper the brown, the dry the weather compared to normal and many parts of england and wales had less than half the normal rainfall, some even drier than in 1976 and it continues intojuly. in north—west england we have had half the rainfall we would expect by this time of the month and so we have a hose pipe band coming in the next few weeks. there is no sign of huge amount of rainfall today with high pressure building from the south, killing off showers we