THE whirr of a lawn mower, the gentle drone of a bumblebee and house martins performing acrobatics in the sky overhead are some of the sights and sounds of summer in the garden. Yet for me, nothing sums up this season more than watching butterflies flitting gracefully between flowers in search of nectar.
In the past, my garden has welcomed common blues, peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells in fairly large numbers – I once counted 20 or so commas on a clump of Verbena bonariensis. However, in recent years I’ve noticed that the variety of species and numbers have fallen significantly.
According to a report by
