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Butterflies have a starring role in the July 2011 issue of Gardeners' World magazine. There's a cut-out-and-keep ID guide, a feature on plants for butterflies and another on gardening for all three stages of their lifecycle. This wealth of content

Last week, Butterfly Conservation published a report called The State of Britain's Larger Moths 2013. It makes a depressing read, demonstrating a marked decline in the number of our larger moths over the last 40 years. The survey, conducted

sited under a hedge and dutifully packed with fallen leaves and hay.Attracting wildlife to your garden can be a bit hit and miss. Bumblebees and butterflies, for example, will happily come to our gardens to forage for food, but often choose to breed

Last year I wrote a blog about cuckoo spit, in which I documented the fauna that had appeared in my garden after I had transformed it from a paved courtyard. I celebrated the arrival of butterflies, birds, froghopper nymphs and moths, but was less

it's not legal, but I'm not aware of anyone being prosecuted for it.I attended a wildlife gardening conference recently, where one of the speakers, Jan Miller, author of Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other benificial insects gave a presentation

tiny) garden.The garden isn't perfect and I've a long way to go, but I've documented my success by the variety of garden visitors I've gained since the transformation: blue tits and great tits, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, slugs, snails and leaf

There's a park near me. It's a great place to escape the urban sprawl. There, I've spotted eight species of bumblebee (including a winter buff-tailed colony), plus honey, solitary and feather-footed bees. I've also seen butterflies, great spotted

on your fat balls.(If you hear swifts screaming above you in the evening, the RSPB would love to hear about it.)Gardeners aren't traditionally fans of insects, except pretty ones, like butterflies and bees. They're not made welcome in areas of intensively

at the edge of the water in total darkness with bats swirling around me.Like so much of our wildlife, bats are having a hard time. This is mostly due to the widespread use of pesticides in agriculture. British bats feed exclusively on insects, so spraying

in the waste below.It's remarkable how much life a compost bin can attract. Books will tell you that a compost heap is one of the best garden features to attract wildlife but, somehow, this 'life' inside the bin can go unnoticed.We gardeners normally only