Although the fauna around and about includes Red and Roe Deer, Badger, Fox, Squirrel, Muntjac, on shore, and Grey Seal, Porpoise and the occasional Dolphin, seawards, the flora are in many ways more unusual.

We live here in a micro climate with the constant overlay of salt and wind in an exposed littoral ambience. Equidistant from the Alde to the south and Blyth to the north, we often watch rain storms following the river lines out to the sea whilst we bathe here in sunshine. As a result, we suffer a low rainfall, around 19”, even in a part of Suffolk with an average annual rainfall well below the national level.

In the immediate vicinity no pesticides or herbicides have been in regular use, if at all, for over 25 years, and specific efforts have been made to improve the trees and shrubs contribution to the ecological cycles, with expensive planting of broadleaved woodlands to counter the years of conifer-led deterioration of many East Anglian habitats.

We have consistently monitored the successes and failures of natural sowings, wind and bird spread, and our own attempts to help. We have followed the Duke of Wellington’s dictum “nerver to reinforce failure”; and by Horace, around 67 B.C., who wrote that; “if you drive out of nature with a pitchfork she will find many ways to return”.  

So in the larger species you will find, natural and uncultivated, the Holm Oak, Sycamore, Silver Birch, Holly, and Gorse. Probably imported more recently are Rosa Rugosa, Evening Primrose, Lupin, and variegated Honeysuckle; and down to the tide line, Yellow Horned Sea Poppy, Sea Holly, Sea Cabbage and many Saxifrages and Grasses.

Wild Flowers around Warden’s

The wild flowers are wonderfully prolific, and within 500 yards you could easily find well over 50 species. The old English names sound so much more interesting than badly pronounced Latin, so overleaf we list a few, regularly seen: