Grow a Bee-Friendly Garden: Plants That Pollinators Love
Plants for Bees: Regenerative Gardening - Encouraging Pollinators Through Plant Choice
What plants to encourage pollinators?
Blue, purple, white and yellow-flowering plants are their favourites.
Bees prefer plants that produce a flower with a single row of petals, which make landing and retrieving nectar much easier.
Don’t Forget Winter Flowering
Remember Winter-flowering plants when other food sources are low.
Bee-Favourite Plant Families
Bees especially love the flowers of brassica, stone and pip fruits and plants from the Asteraceae family such as asters, sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos and dandelions. Don't be too worried if broccoli bolts – just consider the resulting flowers a banquet for bees!
Plants in the Lamiaceae (or mint) family provide excellent sources of nectar too. These include basil, bee balm (monarda), catmint, lavender, lemon balm, mint, rosemary, sage and other salvias, as well as thyme.
Plants in the Boraginaceae family, including borage, comfrey and phacelia, are rich in nectar as well. And flowering plants of the carrot family (Apiaceae), such as fennel, coriander and parsley, provide a good source of nectar and pollen to bees as well as other beneficial insects, including hoverflies and parasitic wasps
A Note on Spraying
If you need to spray an oil do it in the late afternoon, as bees are heading back to their nests.
Love bees? So do we.
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