A bog garden is easily created alongside a pond and quickly becomes a haven for wildlife. This one contains Meadowsweet, Purple Loosestrife, Bird's-foot Trefoil, Marsh Fern as well as sedges and rushes.
A newly emerged adult Broad Bodied Chaser Libellula depressa resting on the sedge while it pumps up the veins in its wings ready for flight.
Marsh Marigold Caltha palustris is becoming rare because it cannot tolerate high levels of nutrients and likes wet meadows and ditch banks that are undisturbed. All our native fen plants are killed by the addition of fertilisers.
A ditch containing several rare invertebrate species which, as a ditch not used as a wet fence to hold stock, can be allowed to develop undisturbed.
This floating plant is seen in this pond with a male Broad Bodied Chaser. The female dragonfly has a brown abdomen and is much less spectacular. The male defends his territory, fighting off invading males with acrobatic aerial flight.
The Green Woodpecker can be attracted to meadows where there are ants' nests providing food. It moves clumsily on the ground, on tree trunks it is agile and quick. It makes its nesting holes in older tree trunks which are beginning to rot inside. Here it is perched on a wall in a wildlife garden.
Yellow Flag Iris pseudacorus is common along the banks of the ditches on Shapwick Heath.
Yellow Flag Iris pseudacorus provides welcome colour in early summer.
The tall spikes of Yellow Loosestrife Lysimachia vulgaris are very noticeable in the wet fen meadows in summer, often seen with Meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria and Meadow Rue Thalictrum flavum.
Purple Loosestrife Lythrum salicaria is another plant of wet fen meadows and its tall purple spikes are seen on banks of ditches on Shapwick Heath
Frogbit Hydrocharis morsus-ranae is an aquatic plant which floats on the surface; the roots hang down into the water. The white flowers have very thin, papery white petals.
Meadow Rue Thalictrum flavum is becoming rarer, like all fen plants it requires late mowing to allow seeds to form and be shed and cannot tolerate high levels of nutrients.