Best for Bees

Last year's dahlia visited by a bee. The dahlia has come back again this year and I hope for more visits

It's a bit cold today and promising to rain so I'm sitting comfortably at my kitchen table assessing the plants I have chosen to encourage bees and other pollinating insects to visit the garden. (An added benefit for me is that a nearby beekeeper sells her honey to the local organic shop and I always buy a pot when I see it, knowing that some of the honey at least comes from here.) On warm days I can sit
in the garden and watch for hours to see which insects go for which flowers.

Many of  the plants I grow are single-flowered, as double ones are difficult to get into for an insect and anyway I like their elegant simplicity. In fact a number of my plants are really wild flowers or what a friend of mine calls scornfully 'weeds' but they can fill up early spring beds with graceful splashes of colour. I am always surprised by the ridiculously bright shiny yellow of buttercups, the generous spread of deep pink  from the rioting red campion and delicacy of little daisy faces and white clover growing in the lawn, all of which are always being sought out by bees.

These are a few of my plants that seem to call to pollinators of various kinds:

Early on there are the bulbs like crocuses and dwarf tulips which the bumblebees are grateful for. Then come the pulmonarias.  There is a small black bee that really goes for them - the charmingly named Furry-footed Flower Bee. She also likes the yellow and orange Welsh poppies, originally given to me by a friend in Hertfordshire and now seeding all around the garden every year.

Hairy-footed Flower Bee on a pulmonaria in late April 

Most of the Mediterranean herbs are loved by pollinators. A pot of thyme on the patio attracts various insects, the rosemary and marjoram and chives are equally popular and of course, there are the salvias, from the ordinary culinary sage to the herbaceous ones such as S. nemorosa 'Ostfriesland' with spikes of purple flowers and the very dark, almost black shrubby Salvia 'Nachtvlinder' or the shocking red one with dark foliage called 'Jezebel'. They all act like magnets to flying creatures.

Alkanet is early - it is often thought of as a weed, but its forget-me-not-like flowers are the most heavenly blue and it fills in bare spaces and is loved by bees. I allow it to grow where it will and dig it up without much difficulty when I have something more suitable, such as an aster for later in the year.

Perennial foxgloves - second year 

Foxgloves are wonderful in a shady area. I have perennial ones (as well as the usual biennial ones)
that come up reliably every year and I like to watch long-tongued bees searching out pollen.

Black-eyed magenta-crimson Geranium psilostemon visited by a bee

Hardy geraniums are brilliant for attracting bees and for filling up spaces in flower beds. I have a pretty pink one called 'Rose Clair' which seeds itself generously  but is easy to pull up if you want to plant something else in its place. Geranium 'Johnson's Blue' is a true blue, G. sanguineum
is among the first to flower and is a sharp pink and, of course there is the stately G. psilostemon with its deep magenta flowers each with a black eye. The last geranium to flower in my garden is 'Rosanne' which carries on well into autumn.

White scabious with a Marmalade hoverfly

Scabious fill gaps nicely in summer and will keep flowering for ages. There are lots of colours to choose from including some lovely blues, deep reds and white, and hoverflies like them.

The two huge echiums have been in flower for a while now but I've noticed the bees seem happier when a flower is not at its newest and certainly they are crowding round the numerous  little pinky-blue  flowers at the moment. The 5ft pink tree mallow which flowers all summer non-stop will be very attractive while acting as a friendly screen to the garden next door.

Tree mallow, Lavatera rosea acting as both  screen and temptation

Later on the one dahlia I have (I'm not sure what it's called) will stand out visually and always has a visiting bee, as do  the various clumps of asters, which started out being a boring rather grey colour but with the improvement of the soil, I suppose, are now a more fetching pale purple blue.

Common or garden aster visited by honey bee

There is one shocking discovery I made about 'bee-friendly' plants  this year, thanks to a book called The Garden Jungle by Dave Goulson (Vintage 2029). It seems that  many of the perfect-looking  plants sold in well known chain retailers and recommended for being attractive to bees, contain  mixtures of fungicides and insecticides known to be damaging to bees. These can remain in the plant for several years. I could elaborate but Professor Goulson is so knowledgeable and so readable that I really recommend you read his book. Since I read it, I have decided to buy my plants from chemical-free nurseries or swap plants with friends who do not use chemicals.