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of our native butterflies to lay their eggs on, including peacock, red admiral, comma and small tortoiseshell. Without nettles in your area, you're unlikely to enjoy adult butterflies visiting your garden.Which other weeds could I welcome as food crops

Field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis, is a pretty, white-flowering climber loved by butterflies. However, it's a pernicious weed that will smother anything in its path, and will quickly take over beds, borders, walls and fences unless kept in check

by seeds from its flowers (June to November) which are loved by butterflies and bees. However, it is an aggressive weed in lawns and will quickly establish itself and compete with the grass. Plant spreads by seed in late summer/autumn, restricting growth

!).We've grown the classic round summer cabbage which is moth-eaten or rather caterpillar eaten after the attentions of the cabbage white butterfly babies. Looks terrible but tastes lovely - once you've fought your way through all the ragged outer leaves! All

of the cabbage white butterfly caterpillars, cabbage root fly, pigeons, slugs and snails. Maybe it's just as well I've got so many.

flowers work wonders bringing in pollinators like bees, hoverflies and butterflies.Vic has told me to help myself to his sweet peas and I have - very freely! It's far better to keep picking them regularly than let them go to seed as they stop flowering

as these lovely, helpful insects I've also got a good smattering of the not-so-helpful varieties of wildlife, such as slugs, snails, chafer beetles and assorted aphids.I've also spotted a few cabbage white butterflies hovering around my brassicas. It's hard

brassicas this summer. Steve’s almost perished in the onslaught. Mine, despite horrendous neglect, survived to produce some lovely sprouts – probably down to the fact that the weed growth masked the plants from the cabbage white butterflies' attentions

. bonariensis too, with bees and butterflies flitting from flower to flower all summer.I've spotted several local authorities using V. bonariensis in flower displays on roundabouts, so that's a sure endorsement of its reliability and performance

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