Every garden should have a buddleia bush.

Butterflies and bees – and other insects – absolutely love buddleia and I’ve spent many hours in the August sunshine simply watching the different butterflies – this is a peacock which is one of our prettiest but our buddleia attracts red admirals, tortoiseshells and commas as well as speckled woods and cabbage whites. The common purple buddleia is quite vigorous and needs a lot of cutting back so choose a calmer variety if you have a small garden. Keep cutting off the dead flowers and it will continue flowering through September.

Speckled Wood butterfly on potato leaves