A late-flowering plant, Autumn gentian displays pretty, mauve, tube-like flowers atop its reddish stems. It favours dry, chalk grassland and sand dune habitats.

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.

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…

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.

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

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

Look for the small, pink, pea-shaped flowers of Common restharrow on chalk and limestone grasslands, and in coastal areas, during summer.

Enchanter's nightshade is a hairy plant, with rounded leaves that taper to a fine tip, and clusters of small, pinky-white flowers in summer.