Buy Native: Find British plants

Native species arrived in Britain without human help since the last ice age. So British wildlife has evolved alongside these British plants for many thousands of years. This has created a marvellous web of interactions which leads to diverse ecosystems when everything is working.

Except that, in our gardens, everything isn’t working – native species may be present in small numbers, but we need more of them, to help tackle our biodiversity crisis. In healthy gardens, with lots of native plants, you’ll see lots of lovely invertebrates, from bees to butterflies, ants to earthworms.

All these invertebrates feed a variety of different birds, bats, amphibians and reptiles, alongside the odd hedgehog, fox and, if you’re lucky, perhaps a badger, too! That means planting native species is a fantastic way to attract wildlife of every sort. It’s a simple hack to create an abundant and biodiverse garden, where it’s simply a pleasure to potter.

I’ve noticed that information on native plants is not just hard to find – it’s sometimes misleading, too. Working in rewilding, people regularly asked me for a good native plant list, but I couldn’t find any I could recommend online. As a gardener I thought that there must be a better way – why not build a site I would actually want to use – one where you can not only find information on how to grow native plants, but also where to buy them?

So that’s the origin of Buy Native – it’s a site created for gardeners, by a devoted gardener. I hope it brings you joy, and your garden is as rich in wildlife as mine (pictured) has become!

Chris D’Agorne

Founder of How to Rewild