How to attract butterflies to your garden
Provide food for caterpillars and choose nectar-rich plants for butterflies and you’ll have a colourful, fluttering display in your garden for many months.
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Provide food for caterpillars and choose nectar-rich plants for butterflies and you’ll have a colourful, fluttering display in your garden for many months.
Just as the bluebells finish flowering in our woodlands, the rose-red blooms of red campion start to brighten up the woodland floor. Look for this pretty plant in hedges and roadsides, too.
Meadow buttercup is a tall and stately buttercup, with buttery-yellow flowers that pepper meadows, pastures, gardens and parks with little drops of sunshine.
Look for the pinky-white flowers of the dog-rose in summer, and its bright red rosehips in autumn. It is a scrambling shrub of hedgerows, woodlands and grasslands.
The dark-blue flowers of Common milkwort pepper our grasslands from May to September. It can also appear in pink and white forms.
The stately grass-of-parnassus displays pretty, white flowers with green stripes. Once widespread, it is now declining as its wetland habitats are disappearing.
The hart's-tongue fern is a hardy fern of damp, shady places in woodlands. It also makes a good garden fern. It has simple, tongue-shaped, glossy, green leaves that have orange spores on…
This beautiful moth is often found resting on leaves, though it does also fly during the day.
Holly is a much-loved evergreen tree - its shiny, spiky leaves and bright red berries being a favourite in Christmas decorations. Found in all kinds of habitats, it provides an important winter…
One of our most familiar spring flowers, the cowslip brightens up ancient meadows and woodlands with its egg-yolk-yellow, nodding blooms.
In mild years, the spring-flowering primrose can appear as early as December. Look out for its pretty, creamy-yellow flowers in woodlands and grasslands.