You know your garden is alive when the plants are buzzing with activity

Setting the right perennials now means you’ll reap the butterflyl benefits later, advises Peter Dowdall.

Lepidoptera. Doesn’t really do it does it, doesn’t conjure up images of hazy sun-filled afternoons on the patio with bees and insect life hovering about the plants.

If I say butterflies however, then a smile will instantly come to all our faces and we conjure up beds filled with flowering perennials alive with creatures fluttering around the blooms of our summer favourites.