SMALL CHANGES
YOU can make a BIG difference!
The world around us is quite simply amazing but currently under a great deal of stress from us. However, we can also help such a huge amount through tiny actions (or inactions!). One of the best ways to help is to remember that each of us is part of a much wider network of life. Each of these small changes adds up when you, me, and a few neighbours starting doing them.  If you're still reading and interested, google 'Metapopulations' or check out the reading list..... but don't forget to try out some of these enhancements first!
Let the lawn bee*.....
Leave part of your lawn a tiny bit shaggier than the rest - cut every 4 weeks to promote flowering of low turf species like buttercups, daises and clovers. Regular cutting makes them flower more frequently (to replace those heads you just chopped off!) so new fresh flowers are available for the bees!
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In my garden this bee friendly sward encircles my mini-meadow - with a nice tidy path mown into it to keep the eye happy.
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Check out PlantLife UK's brilliant website for more details about 'No Mow May' and the benefits of a slightly longer lawn.
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*(sorry!)
Give gravel a go
Permeable surfaces like gravel are just brilliant for letting rain percolate directly into the subsoil. The more you can intercept and soak up, rather than channel away quickly, the better for your garden - and I garden on almost solid clay!
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The other benefit (especially on clay) is that many plants just love to colonise that freely-drained surface layer with its cool moist soils below - all sorts of things that won't grow in your beds will happily self-seed here.
Sneak in the natives...
I love this combination of our native hellebore and hedge garlic. Helleborus foetidus flowers really early in the year providing nectar to early foraging bumble bees and the Alliaria petiolata is the favoured egg-laying plant for our utterly glorious Orange Tip. These super little butterflies dash around the garden before any others in the year, and although the showy males get all the attention, the females' pale green lacy underwing pattern is exquisite, and great camouflage. In my garden they hide under the very dry skirts of a rather large pyracantha hedge that almost nothing else will grow under.
Fill a gap
Every autumn I wander around the 'not planted' bit of my garden scattering seed from these blue-eyed boys: wood-forget-me-nots. They will grab a toehold almost anywhere and burst into nectar-filled colour just when your soul really needs it in early spring. A fantastic flower for early-foraging insects, and by late May when they have done their job you can pull them up and they have done a great job of weed exclusion under their mat of thick felty leaves that they gather around themselves.
Not sure how to incorporate these ideas into your garden? Please do get in touch.