Garden - Long Grass and Flowers
Bright colourful flowers which make up garden borders, beds and edges are very attractive to pollinating insects such as bees, butterflies and moths. Long grass is also a good habitat, as to an insect, it is like being in a jungle, but instead of tall towering trees it is tall towering grasses, which gives plenty of places to hide and shelter. Long grass is a good place to find grasshoppers, beetles and spiders.
Garden - Ponds
Open water is very important in the life cycle of many minibeasts. Dragonflies, mayflies, midges and caddis flies spend most of their lives as nymphs under water only emerging for the final stage of their life to breed. Under the water there are many aquatic specialists including backswimmers, diving beetles and snails, some feed on pond vegetation while others feed on their fellow pond dwellers.
Garden - Shrubs and Trees
The leaves on garden trees provide a tasty food source for many bugs, minibeasts and insects. Some bugs prefer the rough bark of the tree to hide in or ambush their prey, whilst juicy autumn fruits falling on the ground are a gift from above for many grubs, butterflies wasps and ants. These trees create shade acting like mini woodlands in your back garden.
Heathland
Heathlands are open landscapes that support a low diversity of plant species, due to the harsh acid soil conditions. Low growing plants such as Heather and Gorse are typical heathland plants. In mid summer the Heather and Gorse flowers bloom transforming sparse open space into a sea of colour which attracts pollinating insects like bees in their thousands. Heathland in Jersey tends to occur on high coastal areas such as: Sorel point, Les Landes and Portelet Common.
Meadow
These are habitats that are dominated by grasses. If they are managed in the right way, either by livestock grazing or by mowing they can be incredibly rich in wild flowers during the spring and summer months which attracts many pollinating species insects. Different types of invertebrates are attracted to grasslands at different times of the year, this is because some invertebrates prefer short grass and some prefer long grass. Some just like the dung from the grazing animals. This habitat type is found all over the island.
Sand Dunes
Dunes are sandy unstable environments which are connected with the coast and the weather. At the seashore the dunes are very loose and few plants can live in these conditions. Those that do, have deep roots and help to stabilize the sand. Moving further in land a wider variety of plant communities flourish, mixed with areas of open sand. Moving yet further in land the landscape changes into one dominated by trees and shrubs. The best example of a dune system in Jersey is Les Blanches Banques in St Ouen’s Bay.
Woodland
Woodlands can either be coniferous, which has evergreen trees such as pine or they can be broadleaved, which means that the trees lose their leaves in the autumn, or they could be a mixture of the two. In Jersey woodlands are mostly broadleaved and tend to be situated on the northern slopes of valleys, as these areas were seen as not being suitable for farming and so have been left to nature. Jersey’s woodlands have a wide variety of trees, different plants and flowers.
