Request for images for a garden wildlife video

[Dave McCormick]

I am working on a video that I am going to post on YouTube in the near future and its about how to create a habitat for wildlife in your garden and what to do in winter to help wildlife such as birds. I would like to get photos of various peoples gardens that have been designed for wildlife in mind. Basically what I would like is:

If anyone has good quality images of any of the following wild plants, would be very helpful to me (I don't have any photos yet): Long Headed Poppy, Greater Knapweed, Vipers Bugloss, Musk Mallow and Wild Pansy (not sure how to tell difference between wild pansy and field pansy so you'd need to be sure its not field pansy)

Other last thing I would like to request, if anyone has a garden designed for wildlife and would like to share images and information about it, I would appreciate it, it would help me with my video. I won't give out a location, I'll just say if your garden is in Scotland or England, Ireland etc... I'll just say the country, not the location. If you get anything interesting (wildlife wise) in your garden because of what you did, might be nice to report that too.

If anyone has images and would like to help, please PM me and I'll get back to you that way.

Once I have the images and videos I need, I can create the video which will be around 10-15 minutes long or so. Full credit will be given for who gave me the images and or information related to the images.

[ChrisC]

i have musk mallow and at the weekend viola tricolour had a couple of flowers in the garden so i'll try and get some shots at the weekend, what sort do you need? full plant or just the flower? and just out of curiosity why these plants?

Chris

[Dave McCormick]

i have musk mallow and at the weekend viola tricolour had a couple of flowers in the garden so i'll try and get some shots at the weekend, what sort do you need? full plant or just the flower? and just out of curiosity why these plants?

Chris

Thanks Chris, Just the whole plant itself would do (just need some high resolution images) I found one photo I have of wild pansies I took at a sand dune last year and didn't realise they were wild pansies until I saw the difference between those and field pansies.

Should have mentioned why these plants. I am showing that planting native wildflowers in a small meadow area can help bring wildlife (insects first) into your garden and by having some of the rarer plants (such as musk mallow, argamony, hounds-tongue, viper's burgloss, wild pansy, long headed poppy, field scabious, goat's beard, yellow rattle etc...) they could attract some rarer insects to the garden that would feed on those plants. These plants have had unsympethatic management in past either from destruction of land for farming or development, selective spraying or taken from wild to use as garden plants and I want to show that growing some of these can help rarer insects that depend on these plants and possibly ensure the survival of some if you take seeds and grow more of them time and again.

I have all of those rarer plants in seeds which I just planted along with my wildflower mix which has the common wildflower plants like creeping buttercup, foxglove, common nettle, field bindweed, hedge bedstraw, sorrel, ragwort, yarrow, field pansy, eyebright, red and white campion, self heal, ox-eye daisy, devil's bit scabious, yellow archangel, dead nettle, hemp nettle etc... I am trying to show that wildflower areas are the most important thing you can do for wildlife as they attract insects and those attract birds and possibly bats and even if its a small patch, every little can help.

Also want to show what a small bog garden can be like (I have one, no peat used in it though as it destroys bogs to get it) I have bog myrtle, bilberry, heather, native cranberry and oblong leaved sundew in it (its actually a large storage box filled with compost and set out certain way so all plants can grow in it without competing too much)