Plant a year-round bee garden
Do your bit to help the pollinating population by starting off lots of lovely perennials now
Bees and bumblebees are essential to the life of a plant, but sadly in recent years their numbers have declined. A world without the busy bee would not only leave our gardens bereft of sound and movement, but also lead to the demise of many plants.
To understand how you can help bees you need to know a little about them. The UK has more than 250 kinds of bee and bumblebee. Each type lives a different sort of life; some are solitary, others organise themselves into large, sociable gatherings. All feed on nectar and pollen, the nectar being converted into honey to feed the young insects. While gathering nectar the industrious bee delves into the flower and, in the process, brushes against the stamens gathering pollen on the way. This is then distributed to the flower’s stigma, resulting in the creation of seed. And this is where gardeners can help. All we need to do is grow lots of flowers, and to create a truly bee-enticing garden we should grow plants that bloom from late winter to late autumn. All bees hibernate and emerge at different times in spring. I’ve seen solitary bees and bumblebees lazily moving between the flowers of pulmonaria (lungwort) and helleborus (Lenten rose) in late February and early March. As the number of flowers increase so do the number of bees. Early spring favourites include Geranium phaeum, (hardy geranium), centaurea (perennial cornflower) and prunella (selfheal).
Summer provides the biggest bee larder with hundreds of different bee-attracting plants to choose from. There’s little point in growing a mass of over-hybridised plants if you want to bring bees into the garden. The flowers are either sterile and have no pollen, or so densely packed with petals the stamens are hidden. Peonies are guilty of this, but there are single-flowered types with just a few petals that open wide to show off the pollen-rich stamens bees delight in.
Plants that produce small flowers are ideal and the way they’re presented is
endless. The little flowers of achillea (yarrow) are borne in wide, flat heads, while nepeta (catmint) produces masses of frothy spikes. Blooms with large lower lips, as found on monarda (bergamot) and aconitum (monkshood), are popular with bees, the lower petals providing a secure landing platform. Veronicastrum (culver’s root) and persicaria (bistort) buzz with bees throughout summer. The slender spikes, which are produced in great quantities, are created from hundreds of tiny flowers, the petals so small they don’t obstruct the bees’ pursuit of nectar. Similarly, the spiky flowers of echinops (globe thistle) and eryngium (sea holly) are moulded from hundreds of individual, petalfree blooms so closely packed a bee
can roam freely between each bloom without using too much energy.
As summer passes to autumn, bee activity accelerates with preparations underway for winter hibernation. From September the sturdy heads of sedum (ice plant) are covered with foraging bees. Eupatorium (Joe-pye weed) is popular, the tall stems being topped with fluffy heads of tiny, pink flowers. Daisy-shaped flowers are loved by bees, the colourful petals attracting them in autumn. Aster (Michaelmas daisy),
helenium (sneezeweed), rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan) and echinacea (coneflower) all originate from North America, but they’re perfect for British bees as well as autumn colour.