Cushions of clover-like, pink Thrift are a familiar sight of cliffs, shingle beaches and sand dunes around the UK. Also known as 'Cliff Clover', it makes a good garden plant.

Soft brome is a tall, annual grass of roadside verges, waste ground and meadows, and is a 'weed' of arable land. It has long, grey-green leaves and loosely clustered flower spikes.

This large shrike visits the UK in small numbers each year, passing through on migration or spending the winter here.

A ferocious and agile predator, the green tiger beetle hunts spiders, ants and caterpillars on heaths, grasslands and sand dunes. It is one of our fastest insects and a dazzling metallic green…

Rare summer visitors, honey buzzards breed in open woodland where they feed on the nests and larvae of bees and wasps.

The garden tiger is an attractive, brown-and-white moth of sand dunes, woodland edges, meadows and hedgerows; it will also visit gardens. In decline, it is suffering from the 'tidying up…

A plant of chalk and limestone grasslands and sand dunes, Yellow-wort has butter-yellow flowers. Its distinctive leaves sit opposite each other, but are fused together around the stem.

Common cow-wheat is a delicate annual that brightens up the edges of acid woodland and heaths with deep golden flowers in the summer.