How to make a coastal garden
Coastal gardening can be a challenge, but with the right plants in the right place, your garden and its wildlife visitors can thrive.
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Coastal gardening can be a challenge, but with the right plants in the right place, your garden and its wildlife visitors can thrive.
Learn a tradition with its roots in the Iron Age and build your own mini dry stone wall to attract wildlife.
The candlesnuff fungus is very common. It has an erect, stick-like or forked fruiting body with a black base and white, powdery tip. It grows on dead and rotting wood.
This dazzling dragonfly can be seen darting above tree-lined ponds in certain parts of Britain.
Look for the star-like, feathery, white flowers of Bogbean in ponds, fens, bogs and marshes. It is so-named because its leaves look like those of broad beans.
Wild privet is a shrub of hedgerows, woodlands and scrub, but is also a popular garden-hedge plant. It has white flowers in summer and matt-black berries in winter that are very poisonous.
The moth-like dingy skipper is a small, grey-brown butterfly of open, sunny habitats like chalk grassland, sand dunes, heathland and waste ground.
A well-travelled migrant, the painted lady arrives here every summer from Europe and Africa. This beautiful orange-and-black butterfly regularly visits gardens.
The dazzling silver-studded blue is a rare butterfly of heathland habitats, mainly in southern England. It has undergone severe population declines in recent years.
Often growing in swathes along a roadside or field margin, the oxeye daisy is just as at home in traditional hay meadows. The large, white, daisy-like flowers are easy to identify.
The black-headed gull is actually a chocolate-brown headed gull! And for much of the year, it's head even turns white. Look out for it in large, noisy flocks on a variety of habitats.
Deborah is Ulster Wildlife’s Nature Reserves Officer. Alongside a team of dedicated volunteers, she works to protect our special places to help both wildlife and people thrive.