The best plants for bumblebees! Bees are important pollinating insects, but they are under threat. You can help them by planting bumblebee-friendly flowers.
Look for the White water-lily in still and slow-moving water, such as ponds, ditches, lakes and canals. Its lily pads and massive, white flowers float at the water's surface.
Look for the Yellow water-lily in still and slow-moving water, such as ponds, ditches, lakes and canals. Its lily pads and cupped, yellow flowers float at the water's surface.
The common dandelion is a most familiar flower: counting down the 'clock', while blowing the fluffy seeds from its head, is a favourite childhood game. Dandelions are an important early…
As its name suggests, Meadowsweet is a sweet-smelling flower of damp meadows, ditches and riverbanks. Look for frothy clusters of cream flowers on tall stems.
Look out for the small, yellow flowers of Celery-leaved buttercup in wet meadows and at the edges of ponds and ditches. It flowers from May to September.
Look for the pretty, azure-blue flowers of Wood forget-me-not along woodland rides and hedgerows, and in ancient and wet woodlands. Varieties of this flower for the garden are very popular.
The Marsh helleborine is a beautiful orchid of fens, wet grassland and dune slacks. Growing in profusion in places, look for reddish stems and white-and-pink flowers.
Beautiful displays of flowers spread under the gentle shade of unfurling ash leaves in spring, while in winter the abundant ferns and mosses mean these small, rocky woods retain a watery greenness…
Sometimes called 'Marsh samphire', wild common glasswort is often gathered and eaten. It grows on saltmarshes and beaches, sometimes forming big, green, fleshy carpets.
