How to do companion planting
Grow plants that help each other! Maximise your garden for you and for wildlife using this planting technique.
Grow plants that help each other! Maximise your garden for you and for wildlife using this planting technique.
Look for the star-like, feathery, white flowers of Bogbean in ponds, fens, bogs and marshes. It is so-named because its leaves look like those of broad beans.
Wild privet is a shrub of hedgerows, woodlands and scrub, but is also a popular garden-hedge plant. It has white flowers in summer and matt-black berries in winter that are very poisonous.
Some cosmetics, soaps, washing-up liquids and cleaning products can be harmful to wildlife with long-lasting effects.
Deborah is Ulster Wildlife’s Nature Reserves Officer. Alongside a team of dedicated volunteers, she works to protect our special places to help both wildlife and people thrive.
The black hairstreak is a rare butterfly that is restricted to woodlands and hedgerows containing blackthorn - the foodplant of the caterpillar. It is both elusive and hard to tell apart from…
Often found basking on tall grasses, or buzzing between stems, the small skipper is a small, orange butterfly. It prefers rough grassland, verges and woodland edges.
The soft, downy look of Yorkshire-fog makes it an attractive plant, even if it is considered a weed of cultivated land! It is also attractive to the caterpillars of the Small Skipper butterfly as…
Often growing in swathes along a roadside or field margin, the oxeye daisy is just as at home in traditional hay meadows. The large, white, daisy-like flowers are easy to identify.
The black-headed gull is actually a chocolate-brown headed gull! And for much of the year, it's head even turns white. Look out for it in large, noisy flocks on a variety of habitats.
A much-loved garden bird, the blackbird is famous for its harmonious song. In winter, our resident birds are joined by migrants from Scandinavia and the Baltics.
Favouring shady spots in woodlands and hedgerows, Garlic mustard can grow very tall. It has small, white flowers and, as its name suggests, smells faintly of garlic.