Bluebells have been voted the nation's favourite flower and the are certainly mine too. I love to sit quietly in a bluebell wood on a sunny spring morning.

Above me blackbird, thrushes, nuthatches, robins, blackcaps and assorted others sing their spring songs.

Around me there is a faint aroma of bluebells. Some are white or pink, Before long brimstone and orange tip butterflies flutter into the wood and hang beneath the pendulous blooms to sip nectar.

We must make the most of the season as when the canopy closes in above and light is restricted the bluebells with sadly soon go over. Text books say do not trample on the leaves as the plants may die However badgers which line the setts with the soft shiny leaves have clearly not read the instructions.

In Scotland their bluebell is the harebell. Although bluebells of course bloom there too.

The Spanish variety often sold in garden centres with long thick stems and non-pendulous blooms and scientists fear that before long they may hybridise and weaken the native strain. The months of April and May are extremely rich in a very wide variety of beautiful wild flowers to be seen and admired down below the in the understorey of bluebell woods.

These include blue flowers of green alkanet, forget-me-not, delicate pink ground ivy ramsons, primrose, wood anemone and cow parsley although I prefer the the name Queen Anne's lace. Plus cuckoo flower or jack by the hedge on which orange tip butterflies lay eggs. If a butterfly lays eggs on a plant already laid by another butterfly the caterpillar will devour the other butterfly. This is nature, way of ensuring one butterfly will survive.

Hawthorn trees are blooming profusely and you will have read the old nursery rhyme here we go gathering nuts in May. But of course nuts do not ripen until autumn but the word nuts is a corruption of knots meaning the unopened buds which children used to eat, calling them bread and cheese.

When I was a child I used to sit in a lilac tree with white flowers and watch hordes of white butterflies come in and out around the garden feeding on wild flowers, if I sat in that tree now I would not see a white butterfly all summer. How very sad.