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.
The flowers of Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage form 'trickles of gold' along riverbanks and streamsides in shady areas like wet woodlands.
The slippery butterfish is a common sight in rockpools all around the UK. Look out for the distinctive black spots on their backs that look a lot like eyes!
This large shieldbug lives up to its name, bristling with long pale hairs. It's a common sight in parks, hedgerows and woodland edges in much of the UK.
The common cockle is a traditional seaside favourite, both for its white shells often found in the sand and for the yummy snack of cockles doused in malt vinegar.
The tiny, brown-and-white sand martin is a common summer visitor to the UK, nesting in colonies on rivers, lakes and flooded gravel pits. It returns to Africa in winter.
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 stately grass-of-parnassus displays pretty, white flowers with green stripes. Once widespread, it is now declining as its wetland habitats are disappearing.
One of our most familiar spring flowers, the cowslip brightens up ancient meadows and woodlands with its egg-yolk-yellow, nodding blooms.