In touch with Nature

Tips for engaging with your local surrounding environment:

• find a special spot in nature, near your house, and visit it each day
• care for the place little by little, taking actions to facilitate the natural ecosystem
• grow your own vegetables
• calculate your personal 'ecological footprint'  

Creating Sensory Gardens

Seeing Nature
Although insects are often attracted to flowers by UV colour's, we still benefit from the bright colour pigments visible within our own sight spectrum.

• Chinese Lantern (Physalis franchetii): large gold or flame coloured lanterns in autumn
• Poppies (Papaver rhoeas): bright red blooms
• Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus): bright blue blooms
• Californian poppy (Eschscholzia californica): bright yellow and orange flowers
  

Hearing Nature
Plant grasses and listen as the wind rustles through them and plant flowers that attract bees to hear them buzz busily throughout summer.

• Quaking grass (Briza media): attractive shaking seed heads
• Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor): rattling seed heads
• Canterbury bell (Campanula medium): great plant for buzzing bees

Smelling Nature

Fragrant nectar full flowers are essential for many of our pollinating insects, and are a fantastic addition to the garden. Scented leaves should also be added as interest points when activated by crushing the leaves.

• Mock Orange (Philadelphus coronarius): orange-blossom fragrance
• Lemon Balm: emit strong lemon scent when crushed
• Lavender (Lavendula spica): flowers are dried for making perfume and lavender bags
• Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria): the flowers smell of apricots
  

Feeling nature
Plants use different textured leaves to protect them from the elements and from attack by pests. Fur helps protect the leaves from the sun and from the cold, whereas spines stop them being eaten by hungry herbivores.

• Lamb's ear (Stachys byzantina): soft, furry leaves
• Globe Thistle (Echinops): spiky round flower heads

Tasting Nature
There are lots of easy to grow plants that are great to eat or used as flavourings. Grow a mixture including tasty fruit to attract animals and birds.

• Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis): highly fragrant leaves, used to flavour meat and fish
• Mint (Mentha Veriegata): aromatic foliage decorative and used in cooking
• Blackberry: small sweet fruit
• Wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca): small sweet fruit

BADGER WATCHING

Get really close to one of Shropshire's most shy and secretive creatures and their cubs from the comfort of a purpose-built hide On a nature reserve near Whitchurch, in a specially built hide. Every Saturday evening March to October. Night vision glasses mean watches continue after dark.

Our expert guide will pick you up in either Shrewsbury or Whitchurch. Watches last around two hours. Adults 12, children £10. Suitable for children of 8 and over.

For more details contact Shropshire Wildlife Trust on 01743 284280

The Shropshire Ornithological Society

Aims:

1. to encourage the study and protection of birds in Shropshire and elsewhere.
2. to organise a wide range of activities and produce publications to this end.
3. to co-operate with other bodies with similar aims

The Society is involved in the management of 13 sites in the County, to ensure they remain excellent bird habitats.

Become a member of S.O.S and.

• Join them on field trips to the best bird watching places in Shropshire and elsewhere in the country. Day visits, coach trips and weekends away are all part of the varied programme. You will meet other people with similar interests and learn more about birds and associated subjects.
• Get permits for several of the best bird watching places in the County. Access to these sites is restricted but permits are available to Society members.
• Help with fieldwork for local and national surveys. These mainly involve locating and sometimes counting particular species, so you do not need to be an expert to make a contribution to bird research.

WILDLIFE WATCH: The Environmental Action Club For Young People

Wildlife Watch is the club for all animal fans, nature sleuths and young environmentalists - the junior branch of the Wildlife Trusts. Join Watch and you can:

• Become a nature detective
• Take environmental action
• Have fun and make new friends
• Get stuck into local activity
• Help make a future for wildlife
• Enjoy wildlife magazines, projects and posters

Local groups meet regularly across Shropshire. To find out more about Watch or details of how to join the club check out the lively Wildlife Watch website 

If you would like to learn more about local wildlife conservation please contact The Countryside Unit, which was set up in 1990 to help bring about joint objectives of:

• Conserving the rich wildlife and countryside in and around Shrewsbury.
• Improving opportunities for people to enjoy and appreciate their natural heritage through quiet recreation and participation.

School Visits to Shropshire's Wild Places

Six Shropshire Wildlife Trust nature reserves have been chosen as our top education sites providing possibilities for a range of activities throughout the county. Each encompasses a range of habitats and features of interest. All visits are planned with you and tailor-made to your learning objectives and pupils.

Wood Lane nature reserve near Ellesmere, provides an excellent educational resource for a range of geography, science and sustainable development based studies. The old sand and gravel workings have long been popular with birdwatchers, now this nature reserve - with two bird hides - is becoming really popular with Shropshire schools.  Visit Wood Lane Nature Reserve or ecoschools for more details.

GARDENWATCH

After six years lottery funding and 17 new gardens made in the last three years, the Gardenwatch project must hang up its trowel and close the garden gate for the last time.

The Trust will, however, continue the good work of Gardenwatch by working in communities local to SureStart pre-school nurseries in Telford and Shrewsbury, supporting garden development. Workers at the trust will be exploring with parents and young children the potential for growing food and other plants and enjoying the wildlife these newly improved gardens will attract.

Some of the many training courses provided by Gardenwatch involve:

• Working on garden projects with ALD groups
• Bench making
• Coppice Crafts - hazel hurdle making and small coppice furniture
• Making hazel trellis
• Composting
• Making copper leaves
• Seed Collection from the garden
• Harvesting vegetables
• Growing vegetables in raised beds
• Dry stone walling
• Making a beehive compost bin
• Making house martin nest boxes
• Recognising vegetables from their seeds
• Building a shelter
• Sow so you know... direct sowing made easy
• Making bug boxes to keep beneficial insects in your garden
• Making log bird feeders
• Recycling bottles for bird feeders (SCAT)
• Making bird boxes
• Weaving willow hurdles and borders

Forest school involves weekly visits to a local woodland designed to "encourage creative and imaginative play out of doors, to foster self confidence and promote a positive attitude to learning. By linking the activities these very young children do in woodlands to a better use of their gardens we hope to stimulate the beginnings of a lifetime's enjoyment of the natural world."

Got 'green fingers'?

Creation Gardens is a Plant Centre set in the midst of the beautiful mid-Wales countryside. With a tea room stocking fairtrade and overlooking the hillside and a garden shop packed full of gifts for gardeners new and old, Creation Gardens is a lovely place to visit and spend some time. Creation gardens also specialise in garden design, landscaping and grounds maintenance advice.

The Garden Centre is stocked with many different perennials from the common to the more unusual and a good range of plants which are useful for creating a backdrop to any garden, such as shrubs and conifers.  Aquatic plants and those suitable for stream or pond sides can also be found here. Visit Creation Gardens for more information.

For more information on local conservation and wildlife issues and groups go to SABC's conservation links or contact:

• Shropshire Tourism
• WatchWild
• English Nature
• Shropshire Hills AONB
• Severngorge
• WMBP
• The National Trust
• The National Biodiversity network
• Countryside agency
• Best look forward