06/06/2026
Let's help natural plants which need no planting grow in our gardens and area's on our parks. These are great pollinators and each one is feeding something so let's help feed our bee's and insects 🐝🦋🐞🦗🦟😍
Eight plants that most gardens grow entirely on their own, without any encouragement. Each one is feeding something. 🌿
What gets pulled up without a second thought:
— Sweet violet: the sole larval host plant for several British fritillary butterflies, including the silver-washed fritillary
— Dandelion: the first reliable nectar of the year when almost nothing else is flowering
— Clover: fixes nitrogen in the soil and feeds bees from spring through to the first frosts
— Common chickweed: one of the earliest plants to flower at the end of winter, when pollinators have almost nothing else
— Wood sorrel: lemon-flavoured leaves that close at night, feeding butterflies through the season
— Selfheal: those low violet spikes in the lawn that bumblebees work steadily all summer
— Greater plantain: the broad rosette in every crack — edible, and used in traditional plant medicine for centuries
— Herb Robert: the pink-flowered crane's-bill that appears in every shady corner, feeding early pollinators and carrying a long history of folk use
Each one is doing a job. 🌱