How to make a coastal garden
Coastal gardening can be a challenge, but with the right plants in the right place, your garden and its wildlife visitors can thrive.
Coastal gardening can be a challenge, but with the right plants in the right place, your garden and its wildlife visitors can thrive.
A delicate, small plant of woodlands and hedgerows, wood-sorrel has distinctive, trefoil leaves and white flowers with purple veins; both fold up at night.
The brown, oval, spiky seed heads of the teasel are a familiar sight in all kinds of habitats, from grassland to waste ground. They are visited by goldfinches and other birds, so make good garden…
Selfheal is a low-growing, creeping plant that likes the short turf of grasslands, roadside verges or even lawns. Its clusters of violet flowers appear in summer.
A tall plant, purple-loosestrife can form dense stands of bright purple flower spikes in wet habitats like reedbeds, fens and marshes.
Greater celandine is a very common plant that spreads easily in the garden, on waste ground and in hedgerows. It is considered a weed, but the small, yellow flowers provide nectar for insects.
Hedge mustard is a tall plant with small, yellow flowers atop tough stems. It likes disturbed ground and grows in hedgerows and roadside verges, and on waste ground.
The Early purple orchid is one of the first orchids to pop up in spring. Look for its pinkish-purple flowers from April, when bluebells still carpet our woodland floors. Its leaves are dark green…
Considered to be one of the prettiest gentians, the Chiltern gentian is a rare plant in the UK. It likes chalk grasslands, its purple, trumpet-shaped flowers blooming from August.
Creeping jenny is a low-growing plant of wet grasslands, riverbanks, ponds and wet woods. It has cup-like, yellow flowers and is a popular choice for garden ponds.
The early gentian is a rare plant that is only found in the UK. It likes sunny, lowland chalk grasslands, its purple, trumpet-shaped flowers blooming in May and June.
Ivy is one of our most familiar plants, seen climbing up trees, walls, and along the ground, almost anywhere. It is a great provider of food and shelter for all kinds of animals, from butterflies…