A nature lover’s guide to spring wildflowers

We have reached the time in spring when everything goes whoosh! and the bare brown and grey days of winter start becoming a distant memory. There are so many spring flowers around, and everyone likes to gab on about tulips and bluebells and blossom, while pointedly ignoring some of our most beautiful wild flowers. Even though the road verges are covered in beautiful golden polka dots from dandelions, or frothing gently with the blooms of cow parsley, few of us appreciate ‘weeds’ because we have designated them a nuisance and an affront to our desire to control nature. And yet ‘weeds’ – really just wild flowers with a little more ambition than others – garden themselves, survive where the habitat is hostile, and brighten places rendered boring by humans. So here are five of the loveliest spring ‘weeds’ for you to learn to love:

Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum

A member of the hardy geranium family with lovely light pink or sometimes white.