How to do companion planting
Grow plants that help each other! Maximise your garden for you and for wildlife using this planting technique.
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Chwilio
Hairy-footed flower bee
The hairy-footed flower bee can be seen in gardens and parks in spring and summer, visiting tubular flowers like red dead-nettle and comfrey. As its name suggests, it has long, orange hairs on its…
Oarweed
The tops of Oarweed fronds can be spotted floating on low tides. Kelp beds are an important habitat, providing shelter for many other marine creatures.
My timeout
Jessica-Jane Applegate MBE is a Paralympic and World Champion swimmer. She spends so much time training and rushing around from one venue to another, her favourite place is her garden. Here she…
Reedbed
Found between water and land, reedbeds are transitional habitats. They can form extensive swamps in lowland floodplains or fringe streams, rivers, ditches, ponds and lakes with a thin feathery…
Yellow horned-poppy
Easily recognised in its beach habitat, the Yellow horned-poppy is so-named for its long, curving seedpods that look like horns! Look for golden-yellow flowers in June.
Great burnet
The egg-shaped, crimson flower heads of Great burnet give this plant the look of a lollipop! It can be found on floodplain meadows - a declining habitat which is under serious threat.
How to plant a tree
It might surprise you, but even the smallest of gardens can accommodate a tree!
Navelwort
The disc-shaped leaves and straw-coloured flower spikes of Navelwort help to identify this plant. As does its habitat - look for it growing from crevices in rocks, walls and stony areas.
Common juniper
A sprawling, spiny evergreen, Common juniper is famous for its traditional role in gin-making. Once common on downland, moorland and coastal heathland, it is now much rarer due to habitat loss.…
Limestone pavement
Slabs of smooth grey rock, incised with deep fissures and patterned with swirling hollows and runnels sculpted by thousands of years of rainwater, form an unlikely wildlife habitat. Look a little…
My green grocers
Growing fruit and vegetables takes Raymond back to a childhood spent outdoors in his mum’s garden. At Camley Street Natural Park he gets to reconnect with nature, and his memories, while producing…