The People Behind The Project

Meet our team

At The Wildlife Garden Project, we have a small team of nature-loving people working behind the scenes on our videos, projects and campaigns.

Over the years we’ve had help from lots of amazing volunteers who’ve given their time to help spread the wildlife gardening word and to them we’d like to say a massive thank you!

Laura Turner, Director

Laura is a filmmaker who shoots, edits, and has a passion for the natural world. She started the Wildlife Garden Project in 2010 with the hope of getting as many people as possible to help the wildlife in their gardens through wildlife friendly gardening.

As well as making our video tutorials, she spends her time working on our projects and campaigns, and managing our websites and social media pages.

She has worked on conservation documentaries in Australia, big cat safaris in Kenya and most recently she edited a feature length film, Britain’s Hidden Fishes by Jack Perks. Back home in Nottingham, she also runs her own video production company, Laura Turner Film, making videos for charities and businesses as well as educational videos for kids.

Tina Lindsay, Director

One of Tina’s first memories is looking for worms to measure and race wearing wellies and Spiderman pj’s. Thanks to her Mum, she discovered her lifelong love – birds. Growing up, she wanted to be feral – chasing, exploring, discovering and learning at every opportunity. She’s travelled widely from Costa Rica to Borneo and had remarkable adventures – however, is now completely content sharing space with the wild things in the UK, being as captivated as ever.

In the past 12 years, Tina has worked for Froglife, spent 4 years as Events, Lectures & Authors Coordinator for The British Birdwatching Fair (Birdfair), and as Campaign Manager for Chris Packham’s UK Bioblitz. Currently she working with Wild Justice and other groups, projects, campaigns and naturalists and is really excited to be part of the Wildlife Garden Project team.

Tom Shields, Director

Tom works in agriculture, but in his free time enjoys all things wildlifey, especially birds and moths. He runs moth traps all around Nottinghamshire, becoming obsessed with them during the summer months.

He is also a licensed bird ringer, mainly monitoring birds in his garden, but also monitoring Tawny and Barn Owls around South Nottingham. He has a very wild garden, which thrives mainly on neglect!

Ellie Mitchell, Wildlife Gardener

Ellie is a professional wildlife gardener in Nottingham. She gardens organically and has a passion for making gardens as attractive to wildlife as possible, while creating beautiful spaces for people too. In 2021-2023 Ellie co-hosted The Wildlife Garden Podcast, where she interviewed the experts and researchers in wildlife gardening, to get the most up to date science out there for everyone to use. She loves encouraging others to join in with her obsession with plants, particularly native plants, and the wildlife they provide for.

When she’s not wielding her secateurs in her clients’ gardens, she writes about wildlife gardening for the members’ magazine of Plantlife, the national plant conservation charity. More locally in Nottingham, she volunteers for Wild.NG, a group of residents that is trying to make our urban spaces wilder and more beautiful. Alongside all that, once a week she also finds time to volunteer weekly at Hedgepigs, where she helps care for sick or underweight Hedgehogs, to give the population a helping hand.

Writers

Huge thanks to this lovely bunch of people who have kindly shared their time, knowledge and advice to contribute to our ever growing selection of wildlife gardening articles.

Emma Fraser

Emma is a wildlife researcher based in Bristol, UK. Having travelled around Africa for most of her early twenties studying wildlife and developing an obsession for lions, as only a wildlife biologist can, she now specialises in wildlife research for the film industry. She has worked for BBC zoologist Mark Carwardine, researching general wildlife info, bits and bobs and now works as a researcher and logger, for Tigress Productions.

Luke Raymond

Luke is an enthusiastic naturalist who loves to spend time observing wildlife. He is relatively new to the world of wildlife filmmaking and has recently taken his hobby to the next stage, photographing and filming wildlife with dreams of one day making his own wildlife films. He has developed a broad knowledge of British garden wildlife through a keen interest from an early age and hopes to continue learning in his research for the website.

Andy Mayo

Andy is an experienced ornithologist & naturalist with a wide range of ecological fieldwork, survey & research experience including work for RSPB and numerous voluntary positions researching aspects of birds, mammals & other wildlife. He is passionate about avian & environmental conservation & the communication & inspiration of this to others via visual media. In his spare time he is an aspiring wildlife photographer, artist & filmmaker.

Sharon Roberts

Sharon is a keen wildlife photographer and videographer, on land and underwater. She has participated in conservation projects throughout the world including Wolf conservation in Yellowstone and Portugal and other projects in the Galapagos Islands, the Hebrides and closer to home, having worked for the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Sharon is a keen wildlife gardener, receiving regular hedgehog guests in her own back garden.

Phil Bruss

Phil is a keen amateur naturalist with a particular interest in the spineless, that is the invertebrate world. He is a countryside ranger by profession, working to restore habitats and make them accessible to visitors. He has a broad knowledge of British Wildlife both inside and outside the garden, and believes that effective nature communication is among the most valuable work a budding conservationist can undertake. He is also a keen macro photographer, wildlife surveyor and beard grower.

Photographers

Enormous thanks to the photographers who have provided the many wonderful wildlife photos that we use on our website and social media posts.

Lindsey Bowes

When Lindsey and her husband landscaped their garden, they divided a section off for wildlife. They planted trees and hedges and dug out a couple of small ponds. They now have a good population of garden birds, and the ponds attract lots of other visitors including dragonflies, butterflies and hedgehogs. Lindsey loves photography and many of the photos on this website were taken in her garden. You can view her beautiful photos on her Flickr site.

Jack Perks

Jack is a professional wildlife photographer and film maker mostly specialising in underwater habitats. His work has featured on many natural history programmes and he supplies images to dozens of magazines. Nature’s underdogs are Jack’s main interest, particularly herptiles and fish. Jack has contributed photography to this website and has appeared in our film about reptiles and amphibians. Check out his work on his website.

Artists

Huge thanks to Laura, Danny, and Colin for their beautiful designs which adorn our brand new range of t-shirts and bags in our online shop.

Laura Mathews

Laura creates beautifully crafted jointed wooden animal sculptures. After finding a dead blackbird as a child, she became completely mesmerised by its feathers as she opened and closed the wings. This obsession is the driving force behind her creation of interactive sculptures and puppets, inviting others to discover the beauty of these intricate movements. Laura created some bold and striking t-shirt and bag designs for our shop including the iconic Badger Face design. Check out her amazing work on her website and Instagram.

Danny Cleary

Danny had a love and fascination with animals since childhood, studying the anatomy through a lifetime of documentation through illustration. Animals often feature as metaphorical vehicles in his own art practice… also, he once saved a grass snake from being run over. Danny hand drew a number of beautifully intricate wildlife designs for our t-shirts and bags featuring bats, birds and insects. Check out his brilliant work on Instagram.

Colin Marshall

Colin is a Leader in Special Education and experienced teacher of both science and horticulture. His degree in Biological Imaging has helped in communicating his lifelong passion for the natural world. Colin created Living World Education in 2019 to support educators with materials to celebrate and value the natural world. His distinctive illustrations seek to engage and inform children of all ages. Colin designed our logo as well as our new range of designs in our shop.

Other contributors

Special thanks to the following people for their contributions to this website and our videos:

Allen Holmes – Photography
Chris and Robert Turner (Laura’s mum and dad) – Photography
Piers Warren – Photography
Gemma Wren – Writer
Toby Greet – Writer
Dan Reed – Writer

We would like to give a huge thanks to Michael Turner (Laura’s little brother) for designing our first website and being on call to solve all kinds of website related questions when we first started out, and for helping us to get started with the project.

Huge thanks as well to Michelle Widdison, Tom Shields, Lee Kelly and all the wildlife experts, camera operators and volunteers who gave up their weekends to help at events and to work on our films.

Finally, we would like to thank Dorothy and Peter Boden, Bryan and Loraine Oak, and Chris and Rob Turner (Laura’s parents) for allowing us to use their beautiful wildlife gardens for filming our video tutorials.