Planting for insects

BY choosing nectar-rich plants, we can help a wide range of insects find their energy-rich food. This easy decision fills gardens with a wide range of colourful and fragrant blooms all year round.

For me, the success of a garden is not just about form, colour and perfume, as the whole plot should pulse with life, from microbes in the soil to crawling and flying invertebrates, amphibians, birds and mammals. An important step lies in choosing nectar-rich plants to attract pollinating insects, such as moths, bees, hoverflies, butterflies and beetles.

Those of us who recall car number plates and windscreens splattered with dead insects in the 1960s and ’70s will note this does not happen now. In 2017 a German study that had been measuring the biomass of flying insects