Most gardens have a lawn, but before getting out the mower this year, let’s think, are the first daisies and dandelion flowers trying to tell us something? We might like to see a perfectly manicured grass monoculture, but for our gardens’ insects the wildflowers provide some of their earliest meals and the better fed the insects are, the better fed the birds will be too. Left to grow longer, with paths mown through for us to better enjoy them, our meadow lawns become food and shelter for wildlife and so much more interesting for us too.

Every garden has weeds to eradicate, or so we have traditionally been led to believe! Do we have to pull out those wild flowers which love our garden soil so much better than the plants we choose to put in their place? Our native plants love our conditions, they are perfect for our pollinating insects and together they fill their niches within which they have evolved. That’s not to say we can’t have those ornamental plants we love too, both can live happily side by side; diversity in planting is better for biodiversity.

The best wild flower in my garden is bush vetch, Vicia sepium. Some would say it’s the worst weed  because it scrambles everywhere, through the borders and in the lawn, it’s flowers are shades of pinky purple and it looks glorious with almost anything, especially catmint. It’s a magnet for solitary bees, attracting the rare long horned bee Eucera longicornis to my garden. Would that special visitor have come to my garden if I’d weeded?