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Register your details to create a free account and record garden butterflies all year round. To get started please enter your email address and name. After registering you will be sent a confirmation email that will allow you to choose a password.

Previous users will need to sign up and register their garden again.

If you have an account with iRecord we suggest using the same email address to register so your Garden Butterfly sightings will be part of your set of records.

Some garden pots and a toy windmill
A valid email address. All emails from the system will be sent to this address. The email address is not made public and will only be used in accordance with our Privacy Notice.
Several special characters are allowed, including space, period (.), hyphen (-), apostrophe ('), underscore (_), and the @ sign.
Enter your first name
Enter your last name
Your garden

Please let us know about the garden where you will be recording butterflies. This information is really useful so that we can assess what garden features attract and support butterflies. You only need to enter details once, but if something changes you can edit your details later.

You can also have more than one garden registered such as an allotment, shared or community garden. We want you to tell us about the butterflies you see in gardens of all types, shapes and sizes.

Cottage garden flowers
A nickname for the garden where you'll record butterflies e.g. "allotment" or "front garden". This name is not made public.
Please provide an official name of the garden's location. This should be a name that appears on maps and is recognised by other people. Please do not use "my garden" or similar and please do not enter a full postal address as the information you provide will be visible to others.
Please use the map below to locate your garden. First, use the Map Search box to search for your postcode, or a nearby town/village name. If there are multiple places with similar names, click on the correct one in the list of options that appears and the map will zoom in to the surroundings. Use the map pan and zoom tools to locate your garden, then click on the map to set your garden's location. Or, if you know your garden's British National Grid Reference you can input it directly into the box below. Please ensure you have selected the relevant 'Country' above first.
If you know your garden's grid reference, enter it here. Otherwise click on your garden on the map and it will be automatically set for you.
Garden characteristics
Flowering Nasturtiums (credit Sermoa CC-BY 2.0)

Flowering Nasturtiums by Sermoa (CC-BY 2.0).

Type of garden
Size of garden
Small - 50 square metres (60 square yards) or less, which is about quarter of a tennis court or less
Medium - between 50 and 100 square metres (60-120 square yards), up to about half a tennis court
Large - between 100 and 450 square metres (120-540 square yards), between half and two tennis courts
Very large - more than 450 square metres (540 square yards), larger than two tennis courts.
Direction the garden faces
The main compass direction of your garden. Tip: If it gets the sun all day, it's likely to be South facing, if only the morning it's likely to be facing East, if only the afternoon, it's likely to be facing West.
Approximate area of the garden that is vegetated?
i.e. not covered by hard surfaces (paving, tarmac, gravel or decking) or artificial grass. Areas covered with planted pots count as vegetated.
Use of herbicides in the garden
Herbicide is to kill unwanted plants e.g. weed killer.
Use of insecticides in the garden
Insecticide is to kill unwanted invertebrates, fungi or microorganisms e.g. spray to kill aphids.
Plants in the garden
A garden wildflower area
Is there a 'meadow' area in the garden?
i.e. any grass that is left to grow long throughout the summer.
m2
Tip: a square metre would be slightly larger than half a door.
Does the garden have tall trees, fences, walls or structures like wooden sheds that provide shelter from the wind?
Tall would be about 2 metres / 6 ft i.e. about the height of a door.
Is there ivy that you allow to flower in the garden?
Does Purging Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) or Alder Buckthorn (Frangula alnus) grow in the garden?
Purging Buckthorn and Alder Buckthorn are the caterpillar foodplants for the Brimstone butterfly.
Does the garden include any plants grown especially for caterpillars?
Would you like to be emailed regular news and further information we think you'll be interested in about Butterfly Conservation, butterflies and gardening? You can opt out at any time.
As a former participant of the Garden Butterfly Survey between 2016 and 2021, I would like you to arrange a one-off data transfer of my butterfly records associated with this email address to my new account according to the terms and privacy notice of this website. This option will be available until 31st March 2022. If you select this option your old records will appear in your new account later in spring 2022.
If you are using the Garden Butterfly Website for testing or training purposes then please tick this box. The records you submit will then be kept separate from the live dataset. Any garden details you enter into the system will be available for both testing/training and live use. Once you have finished testing you can untick this option and you will then be able to enter records into to the live system.

Terms of use

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