WHEN deciding what will attract the greatest numbers of bees and butterflies to your garden look for flower heads similar to those you see growing in the wild, such as the ‘landing-pad’ flower structures you find with plants like cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), writes TOM ATTWOOD. Use that to guide you to help make the best selections. Some examples you could use include yarrow (Achillea); there are many fabulous cultivars, one of my favourites is Fanal with its bold red-orange clusters of tiny flowers from late June into August with excellent repeat flowering. Angelica gigas is a wild plant from China and Japan, we grow it for its dramatic structure, it can easily reach six feet. Fully hardy in Cumbria it is one of the best architectural plants. If you live in a very exposed site you would need to find as sheltered an area as possible as the large sail like leaves can potentially take a pummelling but you can grow it in a large container close to the house. A tried and much-loved stalwart of the garden are the sedums. They come in a huge range of cultivars; two to keep an eye out for are Autumn Joy and Carl. Sedums can do so much more than sit at the front of the border. There are those that are very compact and ideal for troughs and running down walls such as the wonderfully named Sedum spurium Voodoo with brilliant intense red colouring to its hundreds of small compact leaves that are later festooned with masses of tiny flowers that insects will swamp in their droves. The design of the pincushion flowers on scabious are excellent, in particular Knautia, such as K. macedonica. The Salvia family includes the hardy catmints aka Nepeta, these are magnets for bees. Look beyond the most widely grown 6 Hill’s Giant, there are loads of exciting different species and cultivars. The bonus of many of these plants is that they require minimal effort on our part as gardeners and for me that’s a very attractive prospect.

Next week: protecting your crops in the vegetable garden