Water-cress has become so popular as a salad addition that it is now cultivated on a wide scale. In the wild, it grows in shallow, fast-flowing streams and is an indicator of clean water.

The hairy-footed flower bee can be seen in gardens and parks in spring and summer, visiting tubular flowers like red dead-nettle and comfrey. As its name suggests, it has long, orange hairs on its…

Creeping buttercup is our most familiar buttercup - the buttery-yellow flowers are like little drops of sunshine peppering garden lawns, parks, woods and fields.

Greater celandine is a very common plant that spreads easily in the garden, on waste ground and in hedgerows. It is considered a weed, but the small, yellow flowers provide nectar for insects.

Creeping jenny is a low-growing plant of wet grasslands, riverbanks, ponds and wet woods. It has cup-like, yellow flowers and is a popular choice for garden ponds.

With club-shaped leaflets on its fronds, wall-rue is easy to spot as it grows out of crevices in walls. Plant it in your garden rockery to provide cover for insects.

Look for the pretty, azure-blue flowers of Wood forget-me-not along woodland rides and hedgerows, and in ancient and wet woodlands. Varieties of this flower for the garden are very popular.

Buddleia is a familiar shrub, well-known for its attractiveness to butterflies. It is actually an introduced species, however, that has become naturalised on waste ground, railway cuttings and in…

Sand sedge is an important feature of our coastal sand dunes, helping to stabilise the dunes, which allows them to grow up and become colonised by other species.

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.

You are likely to spot the smooth newt in your garden or local pond. It breeds in water in summer and spends the rest of the year in grassland and woodland, hibernating over winter.