Native Wildflowers are good for bees and biodiversity

Filling your garden with wildflowers helps honeybees and butterflies, and creates a relaxed mood. And, from the Easton Walled Garden to Sissinghurst, there's plenty of inspiration. Many of the wildflower areas that provide food for pollinating insects (such as honeybees and butterflies) have shrunk over the past few decades. So far, we have lost 97 per cent of lowland semi-natural grassland, 20 per cent of chalk grassland and thousands of miles of hedgerow. This is the effect of intensive agriculture and, in urban areas, an obsession with neatness. The result is that some wildflower species and insects have become extinct.   "We need to fall in love with wild flowers, and those who have loved them in the past must rekindle their affections," says Sarah Raven in her beautiful new book Wild Flowers (£50, Bloomsbury). "It is not just about appreciating biodiversity and all that implies for a rich and healthy environment. It is also about us, and our connection to nature and the deepest possible delight that can be derived from feeling at home in a spectacularly flowery world." So what can you do to halt the decline in native fauna? For a start we can help by buying locally grown, organic food.