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It's not just my memory playing tricks on me - when I played in the garden as a child I remember it being full of butterflies. The buddleja was alive with them in summer, but how times have changed.In my own garden I've seen just a handful of small

That warm Saturday (April 26th) brought out the first butterflies of the year: holly blue, small tortoiseshell and speckled wood. They're all common garden species, but I always get a thrill when I see any of them.The female holly blue

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

It’s been fascinating to follow the tweets of butterfly enthusiasts as they marked the arrival of warm weather during the last fortnight, by discoveries of green hairstreaks, Duke of Burgundy Fritillaries and even some large tortoiseshells

)5. Go outside and admire.Nothing terribly complicated and yet the effect is extraordinarily wonderful.This meadow is, admittedly on the big scale and has been planted by garden designer Ivan Hicks in the ground surrounding Butterfly World and Future

I'm always looking to make my garden more appealing to wildlife, so I've been delighted by the number of peacock butterflies around this summer. My buddleja has put on a superb flower display that's lasted for weeks. If any shrub is going to provide

My 2010 garden tally of butterfly species is now up to six. We've had single visits from large white, comma, peacock and small tortoiseshell. They obviously didn't find much of interest in my garden, so dipped down, bustled about one circuit

snails, or perhaps a dew-encrusted millipede huddled down into the thatch. What I saw, was a succulent plump emerald gem - the chrysalis of a speckled wood butterfly.It took me some while to recognize exactly which butterfly species it belonged to

and dropped to the floor. And yesterday the cats brought in a huge black and grey moth - the old lady, Mormo maura - which fluttered around the kitchen ceiling until rescued.Wednesday also brought the first large cabbage white butterfly of the year. I don

As usual, during the Easter holiday break, we find ourselves watching garden wildlife in sunnier climes -- in the Isle of Wight. At St Lawrence, on the southern tip of the Island, not only are we significantly nearer the equator than East Dulwich, but the land tips steeply down t...