Fruit Cages are proving to be very popular additions to the garden as grow your fruit and vegetable enthusiasts come round to the idea that you can actually harvest some of the crops you grow if you protect them from birds and other pests with a taste for something sweet in the garden.

We've got a great viewpoint on this increase in popularity as we both design and manufacture fruit and vegetable cages; from the smallest ground-hugging strawberry cage right up to the most ornate decorative walk-in fruit cage, as used at the RHS gardens in Wisley, no less.

But it's not only the framework we supply; oh no, we can provide and offer advice on a huge range of netting with which to cover your cage - from the finest grade insect mesh netting which excludes even the smallest of beetles, right up to an 8cm (3") square anti-pigeon mesh for airborne winter raids.

Which brings me nicely onto winter, and the relationship between fruit cages and snowfall. These two have never been the best of friends and the recent heavy snow which blanketed the country (with the exception of the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, to the disappointment of many children!) has brought home just how much of a problem snow can be.

Below, you'll find a couple of pictures which aptly illustrate the varying strength of our cages. We've featured a walk-in decorative cage - designed to withstand snowfall and doing just that - and a vegetable cage, which really should be taken down and stored for the winter but at the very least have the netting replaced with something larger.

We're always offering winter advice along the lines of remove your roof netting from your cage and leave it open if you've nothing going on inside, but replace the roof net with the aforementioned anti-pigeon netting if there's a few greens, such as cabbages, spending the winter outside. There's normally a glint in the eye of every hungry pigeon once they clock the green lushness of winter veg in an otherwise grey landscape.

But onto those images we promised. Firstly, a decorative steel fruit cage of the walk-in variety - courtesy of Clare Bevan - located in deepest Surrey. These cages are designed to withstand snowfall due in the main to their sweeping rooflines and incredibly strong steel framework, as you can see...

And then, thanks to Molly Stewart, the Build-a-Ball vegetable cage - covered with 7mm butterfly netting, which should really be tucked up in a shed somewhere and not braving the winter wastelands of Gloucestershire - again, as you can see...

I'm sure you'll agree these dramatic images certainly demonstrate the difference between the durability of fruit cages and we're indebted to both Clare and Molly for providing us with these pictures.

We're also sure that he recent cold snap gave rise to plenty of other wintery photographic opportunities in the garden and we'd love to see your images; mail them to me and I'll set up a gallery!