How to attract butterflies to your garden
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.
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Chwilio
Hemlock
A notoriously poisonous plant, hemlock produces umbrella-like clusters of white flowers in summer. It can be found in damp places, such as ditches, riverbanks and waste ground.
Common centaury
A low-growing plant of sand dunes, heaths and grassy places, Common centaury is in bloom over summer. Look for clusters of pretty, pink, five-petalled flowers.
Lily-of-the-valley
A beautifully scented plant, the arching stems and bell-shaped flowers of Lily-of-the-valley can be seen in many woodlands. Despite its delicate appearance, this plant is highly toxic.
Arable fields
Most arable fields are large, featureless monocultures devoid of wildlife, but here and there are smaller fields and tucked away corners that are farmed less intensively, or are managed…
How to build a pond
A wildlife pond is one of the single best features for attracting new wildlife to the garden.
Hedge bindweed
A climbing plant of woodlands, hedgerows, riverbanks and gardens, Hedge bindweed can become a pest in some places. It has large, trumpet-shaped, white flowers and arrow-shaped leaves.
Types of development and planning applications
Planning permission is generally needed for any development. This means building, engineering, mining or other activity that makes changes to the use of land, or changes to existing buildings. There are exceptions that do not count as development, such as maintenance, changes to the interior of a building, agriculture, forestry and changes to gardens.
Tansy
Tansy is an aromatic plant of rough grassland, riverbanks and verges that has button-like, yellow flower heads. It is the main foodplant of the rare Tansy Beetle, now found at only two places in…
My Early Days
I was appointed to the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust on 20th July 2020, as Head of Nature Recovery South, after being interviewed on two Zoom meetings, a very odd experience in these strange…
Fly orchid
The fly-shaped flowers of this fascinating plant are attractive to insects - but not the ones you might expect!
Rocky habitat
Rocky habitats are some of the most natural and untouched places in the UK. Often high up in the hills and hard to reach, they are havens for some of our rarest wildlife.