Curb caterpillars, but love butterflies

Butterflies are sheer joy, provided you distinguish between friends and foes.

Butterflies are sheer joy, provided you distinguish between friends and foes.

The secret is knowing your caterpillars, which to let be and which to despatch. The plot where I'm making a garden was once waist high in stinging nettles and a mass of nettle-feeding butterflies.

The nettles, of course, had to go. They were a devil to dig up, the tough yellow roots, thick as rope, ran for miles underground. But I have ...