British Native Plants

This section contains only those plants which are considered native to the British Isles, and which are in exactly the same form as they would be found in the wild. We do not include foreign plants which have escaped into the wild in Britain in the last couple of hundred years, such as Vallisneria or Calla species, as these are not true natives. 

Most native plants have the advantage of being easy to grow, but the downside is that they can become untidy. The key to making them look more like garden plants and less like weeds is to keep them very neat, cutting back long stems and trimming off dead foliage as needed. Some of them may suffer from caterpillar damage in the spring or summer months - although this can be annoying, it is never enough to kill the plant and most people prefer to tolerate it for the benefits to butterflies and moths.