Wild cherry flowers light up the woodland edges and hawthorn covers the hedgerows with blossom. White cherry blossoms light up the garden. Many spring wildflowers are pale in colour, to help them stand out in the dappled shade of the woodland floor that is their natural habitat. Primroses, wood anemones and sweet woodruff all flower in May, and the most delicate of wildflowers, lily-of-the-valley, brings the added bonus of a haunting perfume to any garden.

Pot-grown wildflowers are appearing in garden centres. Grown in nurseries, rather than being dug up from the wild, these plants are the perfect way to recreate the countryside in the garden. Your local wildlife trust may even offer you a supply grown from seed of local origin. By growing locally gathered seed for the trusts to sell to others genetically distinctive strains can be perpetuated and sales will raise funds at the same time

Stop mowing and you will liberate the daisies, speedwell, self-heal and other wildflowers that often lurk among the grasses of our lawns. If you're lucky, more spectacular wildflowers may emerge. Old, weedy lawns often throw up a crop of orchids, meadow saxifrage, harebell and lady's smock.

If you can cope with a patch of long grass in your lawn from May until the end of July, it's well worth planting cowslips. Widely available from shops and garden centres, they will grow successfully in all but the most acid of soils, and given a couple of mower-free months each spring they quickly settle in, set seed and start to colonise. You may not have room to grow sufficient flowers for making cowslip wine, but even a small patch of nodding cowslips should be enough to impress the neighbours.

The sparrowhawk was one of the most significant victims of the food-chain pesticide pollution in the 1970s and 1980s and almost died out in intensive arable farming countryside. Now the numbers these handsome predators are increasing because of strict controls on using toxic pesticides, and in May they will have chicks to feed, so keep an eye out for a blur of wings and feathers and the rapid disappearance of a few of the songbirds you've been feeding through the winter as these birds are their main prey.

It is now accepted practice to feed garden birds all year round, but providing clean water for drinking and bathing is just as important. Star performers in garden fountains include goldcrests, robins, black caps and a whole family of fledgling bluetits.