Growing up and living in the countryside for much of her life, Helen is used to big wide open spaces and loves being outside. She enjoys coming to the Centre for Wildlife Gardening, as it’s like…
The turnstone can be spotted fluttering around large stones on rocky and gravelly shores, flipping them over to look for prey. It can even lift rocks as big as its own body! Although a migrant to…
Also known as 'Goldmoss' due to its dense, low-growing nature and yellow flowers, Biting stonecrop can be seen on well-drained ground like sand dunes, shingle, grasslands, walls and…
A creeping and climbing plant of cultivated ground, Field Bindweed can become a pest in places as it stops other plants from growing. It has creamy, sometimes striped, large flowers, and arrow-…
The bill-shaped seed pods of Common Stork's-bill explode when ripe, sending the seeds flying! This low-growing plant has pretty pink flowers and can be seen on grasslands and coastal sands.…
Hassan & Asma moved from the Sudan in 1969 as newlyweds, so that Hassan could take up a job at Kings College Hospital. Hassan remembers farming with his father, watering the broad beans, wheat…
This wildflower meadow has always been managed traditionally with grazing by cattle or ponies from spring to autumn. This kind of rough, damp grassland is known in Wales as Rhos pasture and is…
Over Easter I was excited to spend two weeks on placement with The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. Growing up in Swansea, my home has always been in South Wales. I completed my biology…
This reserve is a good example of a traditional wildflower meadow, a rare habitat in these days of intensively managed farmland where large quantities of both fertiliser and grazing animals are…
Flower-rich grasslands, once a part of every farm, are part of our culture. Most have developed alongside humans because of livestock grazing and cutting for hay. Many have archaeological and…
This is a strange, sparse habitat of grassland growing on old mining tracks and slag heaps, on river gravels and naturally exposed metal-rich soils in the mountains. Only the toughest metal-loving…
