With this year’s house move we inherited a garden with barely a plant in it. The previous owners had won Eco awards for their garden of arranged rocks and creeping thyme. Elegant and better still, no watering required - unlike the slabs of manicured, pristine grass so popular in North America. But no plants, no colour and, more importantly, no bugs. My daughter astutely told the previous owners ‘you like rocks, we like plants’. The subtlety of 6 year olds! As we set about filling the garden I immediately noticed a change - especially the increasing frequency with which we were visited by huge and delicate monarch butterflies, drawn particularly to a lanky ‘butterfly bush’, a buddleia, we planted in the corner. So beguiling, so vital. But Monarchs are now endangered. Climate change is disrupting their migratory paths, there’s deforestation of their chosen overwintering forests in Mexico, and increasingly a loss of native wildflowers they depend on for food, here. If I could save that one place and at least plant an infinite number of butterfly bushes, fields of milkweed…..