Our Butterfly Walk is made up of two hedges planted 10 yards apart offering a great environment for wildlife and planted with seasonal native species offering something in flower all through the summer. One hedge is over 100 years old and the other planted 15 years ago. The vegetation that grew up in between the hedges was typical Fenland vegetation, docks, thistles, nettles and hogweed, not the sort of vegetation you would take a pleasant walk through.





Four years ago it was suggested that this area could be made into a good area for butterflies.  We took all the topsoil away, and planted a few holly, alder buckthorn bushes and wild flowers. Sixteen months later we found a green caterpillar on an alder buckthorn bush, which was a brimstone butterfly caterpillar. Alder and purging buckthorn are the only food plants for the brimstone butterfly caterpillar, the caterpillar cannot live on any other vegetation. Later on two common blue butterflies were spotted on a bird's foot trefoil plant and last summer we recorded 16 species of butterflies.