How to help wildlife at school
Whether feeding the birds, or sowing a wildflower patch, setting up wildlife areas in your school makes for happier, healthier and more creative children.
Whether feeding the birds, or sowing a wildflower patch, setting up wildlife areas in your school makes for happier, healthier and more creative children.
The common spotted-orchid is the easiest of all our orchids to see: sometimes, so many flowers appear together that they create a pale pink carpet in our woodlands, old quarries, dunes and marshes…
The drooping, tubular, pink flowers of Common comfrey are a familiar sight to many gardeners. Sometimes considered a 'weed', this hairy plant can be used as an organic fertiliser and a…
Great reedmace is familiar to many of us as the archetypal 'bulrush'. Look for its tall stems, sausage-like, brown flower heads and green, flat leaves at the water's edge in our…
A tall, broad tree of woodlands, roadsides and parks, the introduced horse chestnut is familiar to many of us the 'conker' producing tree - its shiny, brown seeds appearing in their…
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 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.…
Many of us have felt the painful bite of the twin-lobed deer-fly (a 'horse-fly') while out walking in damp grasses or woods. But mostly, it prefers to feed on the blood of cows and…
Like many of our farmland birds, the yellowhammer has declined in number in recent years. Spot this bright yellow bird singing from the top of a bush or fence, or in a mixed-species flock in…
The nooks and crannies of rocky reefs are swimming with wildlife, from tiny fish to colourful anemones. When shoreline rocks are exposed by the low tide, the rockpools that form are a refuge for…
Unlike blanket bog, which smothers vast tracts of the uplands, raised bogs are discrete entities, often individually named, and are mostly found within agricultural landscapes in the lowlands.