How to Support Your Local Bees
For a planting scheme that will support bee populations and have your garden buzzing, my top two recommendations are 1) grow a variety of plants and 2) choose flowers for every season. There are over 270 different bee species in the UK (source: Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland) and they are all different. We first saw hairy-footed flower bees in our garden when we started growing bugloss (it was an Anchusa azurea plant) whereas carder bees absolutely love our perennial sunflowers, early bumblebees like the clary sage and scabious, buff/white-tailed bumblebees get hooked on our globe thistles, red-tailed bumblebees love the clover in our lawn, honeybees can’t get enough of our thyme when it is flowering, and so on, and so on. No single plant type or colour is best for every bee species so growing a mix of plants is key. I offer over one hundred plant varieties that are attractive to bees and suited to our local soils (or can be planted in a pot), so you can choose the colour, size and style that you want for your garden – check out my bee-friendly plants here.
That said, there are a few superstar plants that merit a special mention…
Bees love plants with snapdragon-like flowers that provide a landing platform. Once the bee has alighted then the flower opens and the nectar is accessible. These plants include snapdragons themselves and toadflaxes that, importantly, also have a really long flowering season.
Scabious, verbenas and buddlejas are famous for attracting butterflies but they are loved by bees too. Buddlejas and Verbena bonariensis are easy to grow in our local soils but many scabious species prefer a well-drained soil so I have tested a large number of varieties to select those that do well here.
Tubular flowers are also popular with bees and we recommend foxgloves, penstemons,
fuchsias and honeywort, which is always buzzing in our garden.
Globe thistles and perennial sunflowers produce generous quantities of nectar, feeding large numbers of bees all day long.
Bees can be active in winter, especially on a sunny day and even more so now that our winters are getting milder, so it is important that nectar is available all year round. There are hundreds of plants you can choose for flowers from spring through to autumn, but in winter the list is much smaller and I recommend growing any winter-flowering varieties you can. Find out more on our year-round flowering blog.
Habitats are important for bees too, including water,