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Garden · Wildlife

Wildlife-Friendly Planting Ideas

A cottage garden with foxgloves, echinacea, cosmos, lavender and rosemary in terracotta pots beside a stone bird bath with a blue tit perching on the rim

A few things worth having

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Lavender Plant One of the best plants you can grow for bees. Scent, structure and colour — and it comes back reliably year after year. Large Terracotta Pot — Handmade in Italy A generous pot for lavender, rosemary or herbs. Handmade in Italy and only better with age and weather.

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Wildlife-friendly planting can still look beautiful and designed.

Choose flowers, herbs and small water sources that help bees, butterflies and birds.

Plant for pollinators

Lavender, cosmos, echinacea, foxgloves, catmint and single dahlias are useful and pretty.

Keep flowers simple

Open flowers are easier for insects to reach than very full double blooms.

Add food, water and shelter

Seed heads, herbs in flower, a shallow water bowl and one slightly untidy corner all help.

Wildlife-friendly planting is not about letting the garden go. It is about making kinder choices. Choose flowers that feed bees. Add berries for birds. Let some seed heads stand. Grow herbs. Plant a climber. Keep a little water outside. Leave one small corner undisturbed. A garden with bees, birds and butterflies feels different. It feels alive.