14 July 2025 

Butterflies, Wildflowers and Wildlife Gardening Tips

At last! It is a summer of butterflies – fluttering five, six, ten at a time, all feverishly feeding, defending their flower, grabbing a space, threatening an intruder, all happening at once. But approach with a mobile to capture these magic moments and they dart 

faster, change preference and direction, or worse still, fly off!


 Gatekeeper unfurling its long ‘drinking straw’ tongue.

One trick is to be out there when they are feeding voraciously as if their life depends on it ... which it does... sweet liquid nectar when energy levels are low after night darkness. Butterflies also rest in the sun to warm up... they are cold-blooded animals, dependent on external temperatures to get going.

There are many sites online listing good butterfly flowers, but very often the insects ignore the horticultural pundits and head straight for the ‘old faithfuls’, tried and tested through time by countless generations. 





demonstrate the universal appeal of wild Field Scabious, a beautiful blue meadow flower which thrives in long unmown grass... or in a flower border. It self-seeds easily, just grab the seedheads and scatter... and walk away. Not a plant of demanding maintenance! There are garden variants derived from the wild species.

Not surprisingly some of these wild butterfly favourites grow in the same sort of habitat as the food plant for the earlier phase of the butterfly – the caterpillar. You can’t have one without the other... a beautiful ephemeral butterfly and what many see as

the ‘urgh’ creeping, munching caterpillar! The butterfly’s caterpillar food is critical.

1 Gatekeeper’s ‘other half’ – the rather drab brown striped caterpillar 


feeds on fine-leaved grasses such as you would have in a meadow mix – fescues and bents. Female butterflies are laying their single egg per leaf right now and through August.

2 and 


Peacock; 3 and 

Red Admiral; 4 and 

Small Tortoiseshell – for many gardeners, an inconvenient choice of nursery as their eggs are all laid on stinging nettles!

Have your ‘butterfly nettles’ in an open sunny place, preferably not too far from a sheltering shrub or hedge. Sun makes for faster healthier leaf growth, the leaves are warmer, promoting faster development of eggs and caterpillars. Trimming nettles in late summer promotes more young growth.


 No, not a butterfly, but an Early Thorn moth! It is the only moth that perpetually holds its wings vertically like a butterfly. The moth ID giveaway is the antennae which are like feathers – a male moth, with incredibly sensitive, long-distance sense of smell!

Photos: in Nicolette’s Wildlife Garden. Caterpillars: from Field Studies Council Guide to caterpillars of the butterflies of Britain and Ireland (Illustrations by Richard Lewington) - laminated, 4 pages double sided, thoroughly recommend all their easy to use guides. publications@field-studies-council.org

moth ID Elisabeth Love Allen BIG BUTTERFLY COUNT organised by Butterfly Conservation is18 July – 10 August. They have useful ID tips. Go to bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org for free app and details.

Also Iford annual Nature and Butterfly Day is Saturday 19 July.

Free nature-related activities for children and stalls from nature organisations.

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