PLANTING OUT FLOWERS TO ATTRACT BEES

Bees are crucial to our vegetable gardens for pollenating the flowers so that they then grow on to develop delicious vegetables. Unfortunately in recent times, global bee populations have dwindled severely.  I've been taking steps to ensure that I have plants that both attract bees and give them lots of variety to gather pollen.  We largely have bumblebees in our garden, but do get lots of honey bees too.  They are the hardest working insect in our garden and without bees, our crops would not succeed - so I am going to outline some plants you can plant out in your garden to help attract the bees and help feed them!  These are all photos I have taken today in my garden during the last week of summer...

Allowing some plants such as leeks, to go to seed does attract bees too.  There are ornamental alliums which you can grow, but I just let a couple of leeks go to seed each season and then collect the seeds for future sowing.

My vegetable garden is surrounded by a lavender border which flowers late spring and brings a huge influx of bees into the garden which aids the pollenation of broad beans, tomatoes, courgettes and all my other spring/summer vegies.

I have a cottage garden filled with perennials and annuals.  I try to ensure that I have a variety plants flowering all year round for the bees to feed on.  I try not to use too many traditional flowering borders that make a huge visual impact, but do not neccessarily attract bees.  Flowers that look great in borders such as asters and double dahilas, make it difficult for bees to access the pollen due to their full heads of petals.

Aster

Bees prefer flowers they can land on easily and access the pollen.  Lobelia and foxgloves are real favourites of the bees in my garden and I find that they are particularly attracted to purple flowers.  At the moment, I have a variety of late summer flowers feeding the bees in my garden.

Lobelia

 

Another favourite of bees at this time of the year, is echinacea with its' cone-shaped centre.

Echinacea

 

The trumpet-shaped petals of the penstemon is a real favourite of the bees.  This flowers several times throughout the year and the bees love crawling up inside its' flowers.

Penstemon

For the past two years, I have planted lots of cosmos around my lemon tree.  In the spring, we have a beautiful show of daffodils, tulips and freesias around the lemon tree and I find the cosmos is fantastic to cover up the mess left behind from these flowering bulbs as they die back.  What I have discovered is that the cosmos has been wonderful for attracting lots of bees to this area of the garden.  We used to harvest a pitiful amount of lemons (about 10 each season) and now we have a continuous harvest of lemons almost all year round with at least 100 lemons on the tree at various stages of the season!

Cosmos

The cornflower is one of the bees absolute favourites too - it's easy to access the pollen and they are attracted by the gorgeous blue colour.

Cornflower

They also love feverfew and little geums and alstroemeria due to the quick access to pollen.

Feverfew

 Little Geum

Alstroemeria



 

The lupin is a flower which the bees also seem to like. I thought the shape of the petals would be difficult for them to access, but I've noticed that the bees have been all over this plant this season.  A nice thing about bees pollenating lupins, is that this forms a seed pod which you can dry and then save the seeds for future planting.

Lupin

And they just love sweet peas!  Of course, just like the lupin, once the bees have pollenated these flowers, you get a big pod of more seeds to save for next season!

Sweet Pea

 

I also plant calendulas and marigolds around my vegetables namely to ward off insects that attack my vegetables, but the bees just love them too.  Especially the caldendulas during winter months which not only brighten up the garden with their pretty display, but also give the bees something to feed on.

 Marigold

Calendula





And lastly, at this time of the year, the absolute favourite of the honey bee (and bumblebee for that matter!) would have to be the sunflower....so as you're preparing your vegetable garden, why not think about planting some bright flowers like these that will also help bring lots of bees!

Sunflower