With over half of the UK's butterflies placed onto the IUCN red list at risk from extinction, the time to act is now before its too late. Habitat loss and destruction are usually the main reasons for decline in species numbers regardless of the animal.
Butterflies need nectar plants and food plants to survive, typically wildflowers that gardeners call weeds.. Nettles, dock, thistles to mention a few.
Owing to the current trends to maintain meticulous lawns and gardens along with intensive farming practices, the wildflowers used by butterflies are no longer in abundance.
We are now stocking a range of easy to sow, UK native, wildflower mixes suited to butterflies so that the general public can buy some after a visit to our sanctuary and reading one of our interpretation boards explaining the butterflies plight. The idea being we encourage visitors to go home and create some butterfly habitat in their own gardens.
Part 2 of our mission in wildflowers is to sow some plug plants of these native flowers and plant them strategically around the country park to see if they survive our conditions and in which areas they do best so we can begin to plant more.
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