Purple loosestrife. Image by urtica.

Here’s a challenge for you. How many native plants can you pack into your garden? I bet you didn’t know we had so many that were utterly beautiful, stylish, and at home in a well-designed border. Here are few of the best British plants.

Fennel. Image by Forrest Samuels.

Ragged Robin. Image by Tico

Foxglove. Image by freefotouk

Field scabious. Image by Eco Heathen.

Red Valerian. Image by Roger Marks.

Borage. Image by Colleen Proppe.

Meadow cranesbill, or Geranium pratense.

Meadowsweet, or Filipendula ulmaria. Image by Willie Angus.

Wild pansy, or Viola tricolor. Image by Anne Tanne.

Verbascum or mullein. Image by Amanda Slater.

Musk Mallow, or Malva moschata. Image by Anne Tanne.

Yellow Flag Iris. Image by Dan Mullen.

For the last few weeks I’ve really been enjoying my patio garden, as my growing collection of containers gives me new rewards every day.

My current favourites are the flowers from these Balcony Gardener Wildflower Seeds that I sowed back in spring – they’re more than just a prettily designed packet, I’m really impressed with the results.

It’s like having my own mini wildflower meadow in a pot, with Ladys Bedstraw, Meadow Buttercup, Corn Chamomile, Wild Clary, Cowslip, Crane’s-Bill, Ox-eye Daisy, Foxglove, Harebell, Corn Marigold, Field Scabious, Teasel, and Toadflax to attract the passing urban bees and butterflies. I nobbled a passing photographer to take photos for me so that you can really appreciate the effect (thanks Sam Glazebrook).

I also have onion plants LITERALLY coming out my ears.* I have just about found enough space to house the onions, carrots, tomato, pepper, and pumpkin plants, surrounded by nasturtiums for some easy colour.

And call me boring, but I’m still very happy with my pink Impatiens display, since they are only my second attempt at hanging baskets (after the winter pansies), and were cheap as chips to do.

* (this is an ironic use of the word ‘literally’ – one of my pet hates is the very common misuse of that word; e.g. ‘I LITERALLY died’; ‘he was LITERALLY as big as a woolly mammoth’. Learn some proper English, innit.

One of the great memories of my childhood was the full-throttle scent of wild garlic rising up from the floor of the woodlands around my home. Even now when I smell it I become a teenager again, tramping through underneath the towering beeches.

I don’t just pick the leaves and flowers for nostalgia’s sake, though. Wild garlic comes in handy just at the time of year when I run out of cultivated garlic bulbs and am waiting for a new supply to shuffle out of the soil. I drape the leaves over a roast chicken when I want a fiery Sunday lunch, and I through the flowers into stir fries and pestos. There’s no end to the tricks you can perform with wild garlic, but here are some of my great favourites:

Wild garlic and goat’s cheese frittata

Roast lamb with garlic leaf butter

Wild garlic focaccia

At this time of year, I can’t resist sneaking in snaps of my beloved snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris). I’m secretly and subtly trying to convert every F&F reader to growing whole fluttering meadows of these plants in their own gardens.

I spent an hour wriggling around one such meadow, peering at the incredible checkerboard patterns on the petals.

And falling in love with the gorgeous white bells as well.

And gazing at a large clump of the bulbs, which have been successfully naturalised in semi-shaded long grass. I could gush about just how much I love these plants, but I think the photos have done enough. If you’re not all sending me snaps of your own snake’s head fritillary plantings next year, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.

Learn more about how to grow Fritillaria meleagris.

Pssst! Look at this. You’ll need to creep up ever so quickly to sneak a peek, and don’t tell a soul, but these are wild snowdrops. Yes: huge clumps of Galanthus nivalis, single and double, growing along the banks of the Mole in Surrey.

The thing I love the most about snowdrops is that they demand you come as close as you can, crawling through the muddy grass on your hands and knees to lift up their skirts for a cheeky peek. They might be diminutive, but that doesn’t stop them from being ever-so demanding. And ever-so glam. Have a look at our Collector’s Item feature from last year to fall head over heels in love.

Really, I’m not a lawn person. My relationship with smooth green swards has been mediated largely through my father, who has mown every lawn we’ve ever lived by. I have always watched. Lawnmowers are big red dragons that grunt and snort and make it clear that they dislike me terribly by refusing to start and chewing up the lawn.

Last week, I watched from my window as my neighbour began his twice-yearly ritual of applying premium grass seed and fertiliser to his small lawn. I’ve met his lawn a couple of times, and we never really got on. The main reason was that when I stepped onto the well-tended grass, I was hurriedly pushed off it, back onto the safety of a paving slab, lest I kill the chemical-laden grass with my great clodhopping feet.

So no, I don’t like lawns very much. I won’t be advocating digging them entirely as I know they’re important, especially if, like my parents, you have brought up three children with cricket bats, bikes and a predilection for running through sprinkler hoses in the summer. But I’ve never been able to worship my lawn. I quite like dandelions. I hate chemical fertilisers. And really, I’m just too lazy to worry about my lawn.

I’m between gardens now, which gives me the perfect opportunity to set out my manifesto for the next plot, and the next lawn. And the next lawn will be a lovely lawn.

The lovely lawn will be one which doesn’t need some horrid fossil fuel-based fertiliser to keep it lush. I’ll be sowing white clover among my grass seed. The clover will nurture the grass through the nitrogen-fixing nodules on its roots, and is wonderfully durable and lush.

I won’t be digging up every single weed which appears in my lawn, mainly because I think daisies and dandelions are rather pretty, and because they support wildlife far better than a vast, dull expanse of grass.

Inspired by the low-carbon endeavours of Lia Leendertz, I’m going to hand my petrol mower back to my parents, and get my hands on an Issy-powered push mower. Nothing like a bit of exercise when you’ve been sitting at a desk all week, anyway.

And in an effort to save water, I will let my lawn go a bit brown in the summer months. I know it will bounce back, and let’s face it: everyone has a bad hair day once in a while. To that end, the lawn will also get more generous haircuts: mowing it too closely means it needs more water, and I’m not creating a cricket pitch anyway.

So that’s my lovely lawn. It’s not going to stop rising temperatures on its own, and it’s not going to win me any prizes, but when I’m lounging on it next summer, surrounding by bees feeding from the clover, and all sorts of happy little crawlies scampering around and being gobbled by equally happy birds, I’ll know I’ve done the right thing.

Poppies and cornflowers are quite the prettiest of weeds. This year, I decided to jazz up my vegetable patch using a packet of wildflower seeds from The Balcony Gardener. I followed the normal steps for creating a meadow, and sowed the seeds in rows between my autumn-planted onion sets, and amongst my carrot seeds.

Now the mini meadow is in full bloom, and looks so cheery and happy among all the crops. I was especially enchanted by the effect I created by mixing bold red corn poppies with the ferny foliage of my carrots.

These seeds aren’t really wildlfowers: many of the poppies that sprung up are cheery cultivars, but they look fabulous. I’m leaving the seedheads to develop and rattle their produce all over the patch: these weeds are here to stay.

…these fabulous seed grenades from Suck UK. Filled with wildflower seeds and soil, these grenades will help any would-be guerilla gardeners jazz up dull and neglected spots of land. And they look fabulous.

I have adored every single episode so far in Alys Fowler’s The Edible Garden. It has just the sort of happy, floating-about-in-the-garden feeling that I really love, and as well as making me very happy, it has inspired me with some quirky recipes and ideas.

One of the recipes that caught my eye in the second episode was Alys’ recipe for dandelion fritters. As I’m an organic gardener who doesn’t pray to her lawn every morning, I’ve got a few dandelions coming up among the grass in my garden. Even though I try to keep on top of them by pulling them up, a few always evade me, and I’m rather glad they did.

I picked as many flowers as I could fine, and gave them a gentle wash and dry. Then I chopped the thick stems off the bottom, and dipped the flowerheads in sugar.

I mixed an egg, a cup of milk, a cup of flour and half a cup of sugar together in a bowl, and then, using a tablespoon, I poured small blobs of batter mixture into a frying pan where some oil was heating. As soon as the batter had formed a small circle, I pressed one dandelion head in, and left it to brown.

I know Alys dipped her dandelions in the mixture before frying, but I found this method was tastier and meant more mixture made it into the pan as well.

Once the fritters had browned on one side, I flipped them over to cook on the other, and then left to cool. They tasted delicious: in fact they had all gone within the hour. It took a while to convince Toby to eat them, and he did so with a great deal of fuss and face-pulling. But when my back was turned, he snuck up to the plate and stole a handful more of this lovely lawn snack.

I’ve also picked up two packets of dried peas to sow a pea-shoot salad in a pair of old drawers we found in our attic. I’ve been growing pea-shoot salads for years, but I’ve always felt a bit guilty about using good seed which would have provided a wonderful crop of pods. But thanks to these packs of Leo peas, which were 36p each, I’ll be eating more pea salads than I could possibly imagine.

What else have you learnt from The Edible Garden?