Thanks to Julia at work for telling me about a study that shows that there are some benefits of growing ivy on the walls of building.

They found that ivy acted as a thermal blanket, warming up walls by an average of 15 per cent in cold weather and cooling the surface temperature of the wall in hot weather by an average of 36 per cent.

Excellent! That's the reason I'm growing it on the walls of my house.

The ivy was also found to absorb some of the harmful pollutants in the atmosphere.

I'm not keen on that bit.

Walls where ivy was growing were less prone to the damaging effects of freezing temperatures, temperature fluctuations, pollution and salts than exposed walls without ivy.

Well that's just a bonus!