[DXOak]

Hi

Just joined here because I have been interested in native flora and fauna for a long time. I have been growing native trees, shrubs and plants for a long time. I currently have in my garden:

x1 Hazel (3ft), x2 Crab Apple (6ft), x2 Grey Sallow (6ft), x1 Hybrid willow (Crack willow x Grey Sallow) 3ft, x1 Blackthorn (5ft), x3 common osier (x2 6ft, x1 5ft), x1 Sessile Oak (5ft), x1 Goat Willow (5ft), x2 Bird Cherry (x1 6ft, x1 5ft) and a 3ft elder. I am also growing common juniper from seeds and started that 8 months ago and still waiting for shoots, I know they can take a long time to grow from seeds though.

I love nature and do what I can to help and I am a member of Butterfly Conservation.

I have a big lawn in my garden but can't do much with it since when the house I moved to was built, the rubble and rocks were just thrown on the lawn and covered in topsoil and seeded with grass, except for the edges of the garden.

So instead I have plastic storages boxes filled with compost (peat free) that I am growing wildplants in. One has small growing wildplants: Bulbous Buttercup, Cowslip, Daisy, Field Forget-Me-Not, Harebell, Ivy-Leaved Toadflax, Kidney Vetch, Lawn Chamomile, Lesser Trefoil, Primrose, Red Clover, Scarlet Pimpernel, Sea Campion, Wild Pansy, Wild Thyme, Wild White Clover, Common Poppy, Corncockle, Cornflower, Corn Chamomile, Corn Marigold

Another larger storage box has Greater Mullein, Small Teasel, Vipers Bugloss,
Agrimony, Meadow Buttercup, Cowslip, Cranes-bill, Oxeye Daisy, Harebell, Hounds-Tongue, Brown Common and Greater Knapweed, Musk Mallow, Ragged Robin, Devil's Bit and Field Scabious, St johns-Wort, Common Toadflax. (or a few of them anyway)

I also have pots with red campion, sea campion, devils bit scabious, honesty, garlic mustard, wild pansy, field pansy, knotgrass, yellow rattle, hedge bedstraw and some others I can't remember of the top of my head.

I also like nature photography and filming and have my own YouTube channel showing my nature videos, which is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/DynamixWarePro

[Sive]

Welcome Dave, it's great to have another enthusiast/expert on the forum to help the rest of us who love our gardens but have an awful lot to learn !

[DXOak]

Thanks for the welcome, been interested in nature for about 17 years since I was about 6-7 and my parents moved to an area that is surrounded by woodland there lots of different areas including:

1) Two beech woodland (one has abundant oaks and wych elm and other has birch and sweet chestnut and ancient oak trees),

2) Alder carr which is beside a river and floods a lot, has birch and alder in it.

3) Oak woodland with lots of young oaks and mature oaks and cherry/birch and scots pine .

4) Two plantations (one of Norway spruce where I found the first Acleris abietana moth in Ireland (2010 and this year) and still the only known site and where I found the first Grey Birch moth seen in NI since 1936 which was feeding on alder at edge which I found last year) and other of larch near young oakwood.

5) Elm wood with lots of English and Wych elm still growing.

6) Birch/Scot's Pine woodland which has lots of grey sallow, rowan and wild cherry

7) Ancient bluebell wood with Oak/Ash/Sycamore/Beech

8 ) Ash/Cherry Woodland with wych elm and birch

Also around is fields, meadows, lakes, rivers, orchard, flower meadows, wet meadows and near a salt marsh.

Relatives of mine even own and look after an area of bog with birch woodland and Scots pine planted along a path that runs along the edge of the bog land which I always love to visit and plan to do it throughout next year and get a detailed idea of what flora/fauna and life exists in it. Might write a book about it with photographs if I can get there enough times next year.

So I have grown up loving nature. Still have a lot to learn myself, but will be glad to offer any experience I have. On my YouTube channel I am doing "wild guides" which are about all wildplants found in Ireland. Each is about a different wildplant (Fungi, Mosses, Wildplants, Trees, Shrubs, Ferms, Slime Moulds, Seaweed, Lichens) but it might take years to film/photograph and see all the native plants.