Ah, so that's where they come from!

At the end of March, I was fortunate enough to spend a week in the Algarve, my first ever trip to Portugal.

Just a short walk from my hotel I was able to enjoy wild Flamingoes...

and gorgeous birds we almost never see in this country such as Little Bitterns... (although they have been starting to colonise the Somerset Levels in recent years, where the RSPB has some brilliant nature reserves)

But one of the things I really wanted to see was some of the Algarve's gorgeous wildflowers.

Why is that pertinent to gardening for wildlife? Well, as anyone who has visited the area will know, the cliffs and dunes and mountains are full of things that we love to grow in our gardens.

So I was wandering among 'garden plants' growing in their natural home such as Borage and Peony, Rosemary and Anchusa, Lithodora and Tassel Hyacinth.

Or how about French Lavender...

Wild Snapdragon...

and Hoop-petticoat Daffodil.

Seeing them growing in the wild is useful for two reasons. Firstly, it helps you understand them from a gardening perspective. The Hoop-petticoat Daffodils, for example, were growing in almost pure sand under Umbrella Pines, and no wonder French Lavender likes full sun in poor soil with great drainage.

But one of the things we are learning about garden plants is that it seems that the best ones for wildlife are usually a mix of native and 'near native' plants. 'Near native' means from Europe and similar climates in the Northern Hemisphere. The insects and other wildlife that visit the wildflowers of the Algarve are often the same, or very closely related, to our wildlife.

And as our climate warms up (and I realise that has seemed a distant prospect this spring, but just remember how mild the winter was), then growing plants like these may become more and more necessary in our gardens.