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.
Chamomile releases a beautiful, apple-like scent when crushed. For this reason, it was used in Elizabethan times as a plant for lawns and seats! Today, it is scarce in the wild, its grassland…
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…
Look for the delicate, pink flowers of Common bistort in wet meadows, pastures and roadside verges. It is also known as 'Pudding Dock' in North England because it was used to make a…
With yellow-and-black bands, the giant horntail looks like a large wasp, but is harmless to us. The female uses her long, stinger-like ovipositor to lay eggs in pine trees, where the larvae then…
The UK hosts a small, but important, breeding population of ruff. The ruff is a large sandpiper that is so-called due to the large ruff of feathers around the males' neck. This is used in a…
Wild marjoram is actually the same aromatic herb as oregano which is used in Mediterranean cooking. Its small, pink flower clusters can be seen on chalk and limestone grasslands in summer.
Richard used to work in the docks across the water from Thurrock Thameside Nature Park. Since his wife died, he likes to get away from the hustle and bustle, coming out with his dog to escape and…
Typical of softly rolling pastoral landscapes, the short, aromatic turf of lowland calcareous grassland is flower-rich and humming with insects in the summer. Its long use by humans lends it an…
The birch polypore only grows on Birch trees. This leathery bracket fungus has a rounded, coffee-coloured cap that was once used for sharpening tools, hence its other name: the 'Razorstrop…
Well-known for its role in making beer, Hop is a climbing plant that can be seen in woodlands and along hedgerows and field edges. Its female flowers bear the cone-like fruit that is used in beer…
Sea potatoes may have a funny name, but they are perfectly adapted for life in the sand. They are a type of sea urchin that live in a burrow in the sand, feeding on dead animals and plants using…