My experiment
Simon has been restoring Wild Meadows for three years. By planting trees, digging a lake and sowing meadows, he is showing how quickly wildlife like otters, badgers and tawny owls can return, and…
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Simon has been restoring Wild Meadows for three years. By planting trees, digging a lake and sowing meadows, he is showing how quickly wildlife like otters, badgers and tawny owls can return, and…
Look for the deep magenta, star-shaped flowers of Marsh cinquefoil in marshes, bogs, fens and wetlands in the north, west and east of the UK.
Provide food for caterpillars and choose nectar-rich plants for butterflies and you’ll have a colourful, fluttering display in your garden for many months.
Allotments can be great places to see wildlife!
Meadow buttercup is a tall and stately buttercup, with buttery-yellow flowers that pepper meadows, pastures, gardens and parks with little drops of sunshine.
Despite its name, Ground-ivy is actually a member of the dead-nettle family. It is a clump-forming, aromatic plant that likes woodlands, hedgerows and damp places.
Just as the bluebells finish flowering in our woodlands, the rose-red blooms of red campion start to brighten up the woodland floor. Look for this pretty plant in hedges and roadsides, too.
Look for the pinky-white flowers of the dog-rose in summer, and its bright red rosehips in autumn. It is a scrambling shrub of hedgerows, woodlands and grasslands.
The dark-blue flowers of Common milkwort pepper our grasslands from May to September. It can also appear in pink and white forms.
The stately grass-of-parnassus displays pretty, white flowers with green stripes. Once widespread, it is now declining as its wetland habitats are disappearing.
This beautiful moth is often found resting on leaves, though it does also fly during the day.
The hart's-tongue fern is a hardy fern of damp, shady places in woodlands. It also makes a good garden fern. It has simple, tongue-shaped, glossy, green leaves that have orange spores on…