How to attract bumblebees to your garden
The best plants for bumblebees! Bees are important pollinating insects, but they are under threat. You can help them by planting bumblebee-friendly flowers.
The best plants for bumblebees! Bees are important pollinating insects, but they are under threat. You can help them by planting bumblebee-friendly flowers.
The common green lacewing is a lime green, delicate insect, with translucent, intricately veined wings. It is common in gardens and parks, where it helps to control aphid pests.
A common plant of disturbed ground like roadside verges and field edges, the spear thistle has purple, fluffy flower heads that appear in summer. Its flowers attract insects and its seeds feed…
The common pipistrelle is so small, it can fit into a matchbox! Despite its size, it can easily eat 3,000 insects a night: look for it flitting around the garden or a lit lamp post as it chases…
A large hawker, the Common Hawker can be seen throughout the summer and into autumn. A fast-flying insect, it catches its prey mid-air. Look for it around ponds in the uplands of the north and…
Set up a ‘nectar café’ by planting flowers for pollinating insects like bees and butterflies
Considered a gardener’s best friend, hedgehogs will happily hoover up insects roaming in vegetable beds. Famously covered in spines, hedgehogs like to eat all sorts of bugs and crunchy beetles.…
Dragonflies, butterflies and insects love this boggy nature reserve.
The fearsome-looking hornet may not be a well-loved insect, but it is actually much less aggressive than the common wasp. It is also an important pollinator and a predator of species that feed on…
A visit to a traditional orchard reveals gnarled old trunks of fruit and nut trees bursting with blossoms and young leaves in springtime, with wildflowers and insects populating summer’s long…
One of our most common ladybirds, the black-on-red markings of the 7-spot ladybird are very familiar. Ladybirds are a gardeners best friend as they eat insects that love to nibble on garden plants…
Enormous flocks of geese, ducks and swans swirl down from wide skies to drop onto the flat, open expanses of flooded grazing marshes in winter. In spring, lapwing tumble overhead and the soft,…