The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has announced its ‘Top Ten' garden pests for 2013 with slugs and snails topping the list for a second consecutive year.

Exceptional levels of rainfall in 2012 that produced one of the wettest summers on record created the perfect mild, damp conditions for slugs and snails to thrive; this appears to have ensured their traditional dominance of the list continued into 2013.

While slugs and snails continued to frustrate gardeners, perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2013 list was the appearance of plum moths (8th) which had never before featured among the top ten garden pests.

Mice and voles (4th) also saw a sharp increase in enquiries with numbers hitting a 24-year high.

Vine weevil is a top five enquiry in most years and 2013 was no exception, with the pest occupying the number two spot.

Others pests which increased in the number of enquiries were capsid bugs (3rd) - in 2013 enquiries reached the highest level for 25 years.

Other top ten pests included cushion scale (5th), glasshouse red (two spotted) spider mite (6th), mealybug (7th), ants (=9th) and lily beetle (=9th).

Further information on controlling garden pests is available on the RHS website www.rhs.org.uk.