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.
Common alder can be found along riversides, and in fens and wet woodlands. Its exposed roots provide shelter for fish, and its rounded leaves are food for aquatic insects.
The tiny wren, with its typically cocked tail, is a welcome and common visitor to gardens across town and countryside. It builds its domed nests in sheltered bushes and rock crevices.
The yellow, star-like flowers of bog asphodel brighten up our peat bogs, damp heaths and moors in early summer, attracting a range of pollinating insects.
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 common dragonfly of canals, marshes, reedbeds and lakes, the Brown hawker can be seen patrolling the water or 'hawking' through woodland rides. It is easily distinguished by its…
Ordinary moss is very common in gardens and woodlands. moss provides shelter for many minibeasts, so encourage it to grow in your garden by providing logs, stone piles and untidy areas.
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.