Choose the right plants for pollinators
‘Pollinator-friendly’ flowers aren’t always what they seem to be. Adrian Thomas provides an easy guide to recognising them
Bee-friendly flowers aren’t always what they seem. Here’s an easy ID guide to the best plants for our precious pollinators
Flowers – don’t you just love them? With so much colour, scent and exquisite design in never-ending variety, they are the highlights of our gardens, and their capacity to enchant and delight is unbounded. But have you ever stopped to consider that flowers wouldn’t have come into existence without pollinators? The story starts more than 150 million years ago with a miraculous development that would change our planet forever. At that time, there were already lots of land plants, rather similar to the mosses, tree ferns and conifers we know today, but there were no flowers – dinosaurs lived in a green-only world. However, when some primitive insects unwittingly carried the male reproductive cells – the pollen – from one plant to another, it helped fertilise the receiving plants. Those plants that had these ‘accidental postmen’ fared a bit better than those that didn’t, and they began to thrive.
Some transmitted a little scent or became more colourful, which meant their ‘postmen’ could find them more easily, and in this way flowers evolved. Plants that rewarded their insects with little gifts of sweet sugars became even more successful. This all led to an explosion of flowering plants, which spread out across much of the world, their pollinators evolving alongside them. This partnership has been so successful that there are now thought to be more than 400,000 species of flowering plants, and 80% of them rely on pollinators to reproduce. In Britain, it’s insects that do the job, not just honeybees and bumblebees, but also solitary bees, beetles, hoverflies, thrips, wasps, butterflies and moths.
Habitats and flowers
A pollinator-friendly garden is therefore one that provides habitats that pollinators need, and lots of flowers are the starting point, offering plenty of pollen and nectar. Even better if you can have something in flower almost every day of the year. However, pollinator populations are thought to be nose-diving across the world. Bumblebees are affected by pesticides and honeybee colonies are collapsing. A study in Germany indicated that their overall mass of insects has fallen by 75% in 25 years, and things are likely to be much the same here. It’s estimated that pollinators aid 35% of the world’s crop production – everything from oranges to apples, beans to oil-seed rape. They fuel our economies and help to feed us too. Gardens are increasingly being recognised as a vital lifeline for pollinators, and we are all encouraged to become more pollinator-friendly. So here’s the curious thing. A hundred years ago, if you grew flowers, your garden would have automatically been good for pollinators because pretty much every garden plant suited them back then. However, that’s no longer the case. Over the past few decades, many garden flowers have been selectively bred to make them bigger, brighter and bolder. The downside is that this has been at the expense of the very things pollinators need. Many flowers no longer offer any pollen or nectar, as their reproductive parts have been sacrificed in favour of more and more rows of petals. Most of those petunias, begonias, pansies and busy Lizzies you see may be beautiful but, as far as pollinators are concerned, they might as well be made from plastic. To help pollinator-friendly gardeners choose the best plants, bee symbols are placed on labels or in nursery catalogues to indicate that plants are good providers of pollen and nectar. The only problem here is that the ‘pollinator friendly’ label can become attached to plants that might have been good in their original, unaltered form, but not as the manipulated cultivar on sale. In addition, traces of toxic insecticides that could harm insects have been found on many plants offered for sale.
Residual pesticides
If it all seems a bit of a minefield, your best course of action is to start with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Perfect for Pollinators list to help guide your plant choice, or visit the Wildlife Gardening Forum’s website, which has lots more helpful information on what to grow. To reduce the risk of finding residual pesticides in your plants, grow as many as you can yourself, from seed. Pollinators need us, and we need them, so pledge to fill your garden with nectar-rich and pollen-filled flowers. Your garden will look even more amazing as a result.
“As far as pollinators are concerned, the flowers might as well be made from plastic”