Dr Gavin Haig, naturalist and former surgeon, has studied the healing properties of many native plants, with much of the work carried out in his own garden on the River Exe. This has featured on TV, has a great variety of habitats, and even provides a home for one of the rarest butterflies in Europe - the Marsh Fritillary. He says, “My passion for wildlife and the natural world began 60 years ago or more, during an idyllic boyhood in rural Essex, which allowed me to explore woods and streams, to climb trees and make dens, and to run freely in wildflower meadows, scattering rainbows of...
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and The Wildlife Trusts have joined forces to urge gardeners to do more to help protect bumblebees and solitary bees, heroes of the pollinator world. The Bee Creative in the Garden! call comes as bees are under increasing pressure largely due to loss of habitat. In the countryside, 97% of lowland meadow has already been lost and the dramatic decrease in suitable habitats isn’t just confined to rural areas. The network of 15 million gardens that once formed ‘green corridors’ for wildlife is also disappearing at an alarming rate. In response here in the...