Water avens
Look for Water avens in damp habitats, such as riversides, wet woodlands and wet meadows. It has nodding, purple-and-orange flowers that hang on delicate, purple stems.
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Look for Water avens in damp habitats, such as riversides, wet woodlands and wet meadows. It has nodding, purple-and-orange flowers that hang on delicate, purple stems.
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.
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.
The delightful fragrance of wild thyme can punctuate a summer walk over a chalk grassland. It forms low-growing mats with dense clusters of purple-pink flowers.
A wildlife pond is one of the single best features for attracting new wildlife to the garden.
The striking black-and-white checks of the marbled white are unmistakeable. Watch out for it alighting on purple flowers, such as field scabious, on chalk and limestone grasslands and along…
White dead-nettle does not sting. It displays dense clusters of white flowers in whorls around its stem, and can be found on disturbed ground, such as roadside verges.
A spring delight, the wood anemone grows in dappled shade in ancient woodlands. Traditional management, such as coppicing, can help such flowers by opening up the woodland floor to sunlight.
Cross-leaved heath is a type of heather that likes bogs, heathland and moorland. It has distinctive pink, bell-shaped flowers that attract all kinds of nectar-loving insects.
Traditionally a coastal species, Lesser sea-spurrey has spread inland, taking advantage of the winter-salting of our roads. Its pink-and-white flowers bloom in summer.
A scrambling 'weed' of waste ground, fields and gardens, Common fumitory can be found on dry and disturbed soils. Its pink flowers appear over spring and summer.
A sure sign that spring has arrived, the Cuckooflower blooms from April. Look out for its delicate, pale pink flowers in damp meadows and ditches, and on riverbanks.