A visit to a traditional orchard reveals gnarled old trunks of fruit and nut trees bursting with blossoms and young leaves in springtime, with wildflowers and insects populating summer’s long grass, and foraging wildlife attracted by autumn’s fallen fruit.
Hedgerows are one of our most easily encountered wildlife habitats, found lining roads, railways and footpaths, bordering fields and gardens and on the coast.
Most arable fields are large, featureless monocultures devoid of wildlife, but here and there are smaller fields and tucked away corners that are farmed less intensively, or are managed specifically with wildlife in mind.
Lakes come in many forms: some are splendid and clear, while others are more reminiscent of a murky swamp. Each lake is strongly influenced by the underlying lakebed and the surrounding landscape, and collectively, lakes support a huge variety of animal and plant life.
Cool, crystal-clear waters flow over gravelly beds, streaming through white-flowered water-crowfoot and watercress in serene lowland landscapes.
These wild, open landscapes stretch over large areas and are most often found in uplands. Although slow to awaken in spring, by late summer heathland can be an eye-catching purple haze of heather.
Heathlands form some of the wildest landscapes in the lowlands, where agriculture and development jostle for space, containing and limiting natural processes. Once considered as waste land of little value, lowland heathland is now appreciated and protected for its unique wildlife and austere beauty.
This distinctive type of damp pasture is generally found on commons, as a component of lowland fen, or in undeveloped corners of otherwise intensively farmed landscapes.
Generally found as part of lowland farms or nature reserves, these small, flower-rich fields are at their best in midsummer when the plethora of flowers and insects is a delight. Tiny reminders of the former abundance of wildflowers in the farmed countryside, they are now treasured for both their wildlife and for the unique rural traditions that developed as part of their farmed history.
Sprinkled with diminutive, short-living flowers in spring and parched dry by July, this is a habitat of heathlands, coastal grasslands and ancient parkland.
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 ancient feel and it is often seen amongst prehistoric burial mounds, hill forts and old trackways.
Enormous flocks of geese, ducks and swans swirl down from wide skies to drop onto the flat, open expanses of flooded grazing marshes in winter. In spring, lapwing tumble overhead and the soft, damp ground speckled with cuckooflowers provides excellent habitat for waders probing for prey in the damp soil. By summer, when the ground is drier, some marshes are cut for hay or silage, but the ditches remain wet and come alive with dragonflies and other insects.
