When I was young butterflies hung in the summer skies, like white puffy clouds on a sunny day.

Today butterflies are far less common and many are under threat. It's the same with many other pollinators. They are getting rarer and some are becoming extinct. And this affects ALL of us.

It affects us all because many of the foods we eat cannot grow without pollinating insects. For example crops such as celery, sugar beet, oilseed rape, cabbage, cauliflower, strawberries, sunflowers, apples, plums and pears all need bees to pollinate them.

I often hear people laugh when I suggest this. They say crops such as cabbage and celery don't need bees to produce a crop when sown from seed. What they forget is that without the bees these crops cannot produce the seed that produces the crop. They are biennials and flower in their second year to produce the seed used to grow the crop that we eat.

And without bees there is no oil for sunflower oil for cooking. It's the same with the vegetable oil produced by oilsed rape. It needs bees to produce the seed that produces the oil.

Wasps and flies are also pollinators. As are butterflies, hoverflies and a host of other insects.

So how do we ensure we have enough pollinators?

Looking after pollinators in the garden

Gardeners can help pollinators. Even if you only have a window box or small plot it's possible to grow plants that encourage pollinators. Early in the season a few crocus can help a huge amount. Bees love them. They also love any other flowering plant that produces accessible nectar or pollen for them.

Some plants attract many types of insects. For example buddleia attract butterflies and bees for as long as they flower. And you can extend the length of time they flower by giving them a prune after the first flowering. This stimulates a second flowering and prolongs the season.

Growing clover in your grassed areas is also going to encourage bees. Provided, that is, you don't keep cutting it back. I know freshly mown grass smells wonderful and it all looks neat and tidy. But leaving the grass a bit longer between trims means the clover can flower and the bees benefit.

One way to do this is to stagger your mowing. Try cutting one area of grass one week and another section a week later. And don't mow quite so short. Longer grass will encourage the flowering plants, nestled between the grasses, to grow and flower.

Of course you can go further and grow a wildflower meadow. By mowing just once or twice a year it's possible to encourage a huge range of flowering plants that will soon be visited by a diverse range of pollinating insects.

If you want to speed up the process you can sow wildflower seeds in the spring and let nature get on with it. We bought a 100g of seed last year and were soon seeing a multitude of flowering plants in our lawn. The seed we bought contained nearly 30 varieties of flowering plants. From cowslips, poppies and yarrow to yellow rattle and wild carrot, we had wild flowers all summer.

Pollinators: a communal effort

Despite the bad news about a decline in pollinators, there is some good news. It's that, as a community we can all help pollinators.

The idea of community help is taking off across the country and is based around the way we manage publicly owned land that is managed by the councils on our behalf. By this I mean the grass verges and central reservations along the public road network.

Rather than cut this grass uniformly short all year, an increasing number of councils are cutting them less often and allowing wild flowers to grow, flower and seed.

There are of course safety concerns. We don't want to have overgrown verges and hedges obscuring sight lines at junctions. That would be very dangerous. But we can cut adequate sight lines and still allow areas of verge to flower and attract pollinators.

Tidiness is also a concern. No one wants an untidy countryside. But managed properly tidiness and biodiversity can sit alongside one another and co-exist. And few people find swathes of well managed beautiful flowers an eyesore!

Government and council initiatives

Wildflowers do much better on poorer soils. It's their natural habitat. Richer soils encourage aggressive grasses, which need cutting more often. They also attract docks and nettles which outcompete wildflowers.

Recognising this, Highways England have a new initiative affecting new road schemes. Rather than covering the verges with highly fertile topsoil, as has been the practice to date, they are now instructing contractors to follow their Low Nutrient Grasslands policy. This entails using low nutrient soils and subsoils when building verges. This reduces the carbon footprint of the verges, costs less and improves safety.

Devon has been blessed with several Highways England wildflower schemes. For example, on the A38 between Ashburton and Ivybridge, over 20 species of wildflowers have been encouraged. These verges are now home to a rich diversity of pollinators attracted to the oxeye daisies, cornflowers, yellow rattle, poppies and other plants, that led to this verge winning a Pollinator Award in the Big Biodiversity Challenge.

Another major site where subsoil was used is the Weymouth Relief road. Wide chalk cuttings were left bare of imported topsoil and have encouraged populations of chalk loving flora. Over 140 plant species now adorn the cuttings and this has attracted 30 species of butterflies.

But there's no need to go to Dorset to see wildflowers. Locally the verges at Bowd are hopefully about to see more wildflowers. A verges trial is commencing that will see grass cut at junctions to enable good visibility, but other parts will be left uncut in an attempt to encourage flowers back onto our verges. And if this is successful then it could be expanded to other parts of Sidmouth and the Sid Valley.

It may take a few years, but Sidmouth is set to see more wildflowers, bees and butterflies.

There's more on wildflowers and gardening at BiteSizedGardening.co.uk