With its familiar features, the Field pansy is a delicate version of a garden favourite. Usually creamy-yellow in colour, it can be seen in fields and on roadside verges and waste ground.

A summer visitor, the wheatear is a handsome chat, with black cheeks, white eyestripes, a blue back and a pale orange chest. Look for it on upland heaths and moors.

The song thrush is a familiar garden visitor that has a beautiful and loud song. The broken shells of their blue, spotty eggs can often be found under a hedge in spring.

The tiny, brown-and-white sand martin is a common summer visitor to the UK, nesting in colonies on rivers, lakes and flooded gravel pits. It returns to Africa in winter.

Brush through a wildflower meadow at the height of summer and you'll hear the tiny seeds of yellow-rattle rattling in their brown pods, hence its name.

A classic fern of woodlands across the UK, the male-fern is also a great addition to any garden. It grows impressive stands from underground rhizomes, dying back in autumn.

The rare Adonis blue can be spotted on sunny chalk grasslands throughout summer. Males are a dazzling sky-blue in colour, while females are duller brown.

Golden banks of common rock-rose make a spectacular sight on our chalk and limestone grasslands in summer. A creeping shrub, it is good for bees, moths and butterflies.

A notoriously poisonous plant, hemlock produces umbrella-like clusters of white flowers in summer. It can be found in damp places, such as ditches, riverbanks and waste ground.

The shiny, translucent porcelain fungus certainly lives up to its name in appearance. It can be seen growing on beech trees and dead wood in summer and autumn.

Water-plantain is an aquatic plant of shallow water and muddy banks. In bloom over summer, it displays tall branches of loosely clustered, pale lilac flowers.

The striking red crown, golden back, and bright yellow wings of the goldfinch make it one of our prettiest garden birds. It happily visits birdtables and feeders across the UK.