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.
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.
A low-growing plant of sand dunes, heaths and grassy places, Common centaury is in bloom over summer. Look for clusters of pretty, pink, five-petalled flowers.
Go chemical-free in your garden to help wildlife! Here's how to prevent slugs and insects from eating your plants with wildlife-friendly methods.
A sprawling plant, wild liquorice often has large, kinked stems. It favours woodland, scrub and grassland habitats on chalky soils - look for pea-like flowers and pods. This liquorice is not…
The vast, green mats that sometimes cover the surface of still water, such as ponds, flooded gravel pits and old canals, are actually Common duckweed. A tiny, single plant, it groups together to…
As its name suggests, Deadly nightshade is a highly poisonous plant. Its black, shiny berries may be tempting but fatal. Found on chalky and disturbed ground, such as scrub or verges, it has bell-…
Living up to its name, the Robin's pincushion is a red, round, hairy growth that can be seen on wild roses. It is caused by the larvae of a tiny gall wasp that feeds on the host plant, but…
A climbing plant of woodlands, hedgerows, riverbanks and gardens, Hedge bindweed can become a pest in some places. It has large, trumpet-shaped, white flowers and arrow-shaped leaves.
Dittander is a herb of coastal saltmarshes and damp ground. Its waxy leaves and long roots help it to survive in this harsh environment. Due to its peppery taste, it has also become a popular…
Next time you pass a verdant cushion of moss carpeting the woodland floor, or creeping out between a couple of paving stones, stop and study this superhero of the natural world; often overlooked,…
We all enjoy eating fruits and nuts but perhaps don’t always notice the diversity in them and the complex relationships that have evolved between plants and animals to ensure efficient seed…
Tansy is an aromatic plant of rough grassland, riverbanks and verges that has button-like, yellow flower heads. It is the main foodplant of the rare Tansy Beetle, now found at only two places in…