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We always try to plant bee-friendly flowers, but the aliums and verbascums are the only ones that are crawling with bees all the time, the others only seem to hold casual interest.
I have grown Eupatorium before and the bees/pollinating insects seemed to love them.
They tend to flower later in the summer.
Angelica have also proven to be popular.
Lavender going well here and the heather earlier in the season was a favourite.
We have a Chilean Potato Plant (link) which the bees seem to spend a lot of time in. The only downside is it grows incredibly quickly, so needs keeping on top of.
Another vote for lavender here, bee central!
Well the more structured planting, roses etc are done so now its the wildflower mix areas and even clover flowers in the grass that's popular with the bees. I couldn't name the wildflower mix areas though - just some mixed packets of seeds.
Lavender for us too. Usually has many bees around it
Catoniasta. By A MILE.
Lavendar next best but no where close
Fox gloves too.
Earlier in the year, the Pyracanthus had a lot of bees etc on it, including Ashy Mining bees and assorted bumbles. That was followed by the foxgloves. Now it's mostly lavender and some other stuff I've forgotten the name of, cos I'm useless like that
Not just with bees but with seemingly everything - Teddybear Sunflowers. Rather than visiting though, creatures just seem to move in. With things like the foxgloves you've got that constant activity of bees and hoverflies moving from flower to flower but with the sunflowers it just seemed to be a hangout - creatures seem to claim a little bit of each flower as their own and stay put. Last year each flower seemed to have a little community of all sorts of beasties just all hanging out together for weeks snugged up amongst the petals and there were little legs and noses poking out here there and everywhere.
Salvia Hot Lips - flowers for ages, smells great (like sage - same family) and is always covered in bees.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/208839/salvia-hot-lips/details
Cotoneaster
Primula vialli
Roses
Lavender
Sedums
Thyme
Oregano / marjoram
Apples (strangely we have 2 flowers on the Bramley that have just opened after a cooler spell)
Strawberries
We need to up our july and August flower game
Lavender, and earlier in the year, Comfrey.
Mrs BigJohn is the horticulturalist. We have a border of thyme which is buzzing like crazy and several other areas of the garden that seem busy.
However some of the crops at her allotment seem to be a bit sparse because earlier this year there seems to have been a shortage of pollinators.
Lavender always a winner in our garden!
Catoniasta, lavender and fox gloves but all my fox gloves have died now.
The Lavender is an easy one, it blooms pretty much the whole way through too.
We like a colorful garden so there's always something in full bloom and covered in bees.
Lavender for several weeks now.
Have a look at rosybee plants. The owners study which plants attract which bees.
Currently, number 1 in our garden is lavender Edelweiss - completely smothered in bees.
I was sat in the garden watching the bees enjoying the sage when I saw this thread. So here is a near real time photo
Mallow (Lavatera)
We had two large lavender at the static caravan which were always full with bees. Our lavender at home isn't /doesn't flower as well.
I have a short lavender hedge and a lot of clover (two different sorts) on the lawn. Currently I would say the clover is winning.
Atm it's lavender, Marjoram and native geraniums.
Hebe was a huge hit but that's turning brown now. Any umbellifers do well, in fact our self seeded hogweed is covered in native ladybirds.
I start the bee friendly year around late January early February with lungwort, then finish the bee season with verbena.
Cotoneaster always popular. Otherwise the clover on the lawn has been hugely popular this year.
Honeybees on russian sage Perovskia atriplicifolia and catnip. Bumblebees on hollyhock (the foxgloves are done for this yr). Honeybees and butterflies on the buddleia. Amazing number of hoverflies and ladybirds on cornflowers Centaurea montana, and wasps on both the nectar and going for the hoverflies. We keep meaning to do herbs but not got around to it yet - oregano, marjoram, thyme, sage are always popular.
Here it's cotoneaster, a huge rambling rose, and the rampant self-seeding and spreading Red Valerian. The Valerian also attracts Hummingbird Hawk-Moths, which is a huge bonus. There's also a hell of a lot of bees on the hanging baskets full of petunias and lobelia. The bumble bees also love the Devil's Paintbrush and clover which grow rampant on the steep banks I've left uncut for them. I turned over some new ground for some pollinator friendly borders, and they're covered in self-sown opium poppies. The bumble bees love those, but I'm uprooting them as soon as they finish flowering to prevent too many more next year.
Excited to see how the buddleias turn out. One has put on about four feet of growth and is about to flower.
Oh, and I've planted a ten metre hedge of Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Dog Rose for them for next spring, plus some apples, damsons and plums.
I had a keen lepidopterist round the other day, and he tells me butterflies and moths are having a spectacular year so far, massive recovery from last years
Mrs DB is a horticulturist and spoke with a local beekeeper about best hedge plants - cotoneaster, forsythia, blackthorn and hawthorn were all recommended. We also have foxgloves, budlia, honeysuckle as well as encouraging clover on the lawn. Long term plans are to get some beehives here - we’re next to a wild meadow plus there’s lots of gorse over winter into spring.
Mrs DB is a horticulturist and spoke with a local beekeeper about best hedge plants - cotoneaster, forsythia, blackthorn and hawthorn were all recommended. We also have foxgloves, buddleias, honeysuckle as well as encouraging clover on the lawn. Long term plans are to get some beehives here - we’re next to a wild meadow plus there’s lots of gorse over winter into spring.
No idea what it is but I've got a big blue bush that's permanently teaming with bees. Well, the bulk of the bush is actually dark green leaves but it's covered in blue flowery things that the bees seem to love.
Not much of a gardener...
Pretty sure my mum is over tomorrow and she'll know exactly what it is.
I tend to refer to it as that flipping great big blue thing. Not sure what the Latin is.
Despite not being much of a horticulturalist, I do know it needs cutting back. I'm kind of reluctant to do it though because the bees do love it and I'd hate to reduce the amount of blue flowery stuff that they seem to like so much.
I tend to refer to it as that flipping great big blue thing. Not sure what the Latin is.
Sounds like 'Res Magna Caerulea' to me
Hebes and foxgloves earlier in the year. Right now the thing that’s alive with buzzing things is a parsley that’s bolted, though it seems to be more hover flies than bees.
White lavender. We have a bush along the front of the house with up to a hundred bees on it at this time of year.
No idea what it is but I've got a big blue bush that's permanently teaming with bees. Well, the bulk of the bush is actually dark green leaves but it's covered in blue flowery things that the bees seem to love.
Lilac? Ceanothus?
Apart from the ones above we have an escallonia shrub that is in flower at the moment, various honeysuckles and the Japanese anemones are just flowering. The flowers and grasses in our un-cut grass are very popular with insects including self heal, rough hawkbit and the magnificent self-set evening primrose below. The flowers on the un-cut privet too,
See the “let it bloom June” thread for inspiration!
We have knapweed in the front garden. The bees and other invertebrates seem to like it. It also has the added bonus that the goldfinches come and eat the seeds after it has finished flowering.
@ben sounds like a Ceanothus.
Oregano / marjoram is a winner in our garden. It self-seeds like crazy so have started letting it grow on the patch behind our back fence and had to rein in the seeded patches in the garden.
Ceanothus it is! Cheers.
https://xeraplants.com/plants/ceanothus-concha/
Pretty sure it's that one. I went to take a picture but the big blue bush is definitely just a big green bush now.
Ceanothus is sometimes called Californian Lilac, loved by hummingbirds!
edit…..
and they're covered in self-sown opium poppies. The bumble bees love those
Not just bees, to be fair.
Back at work yesterday and the most popular so far is the Borage.
Catoniasta. By A MILE.
same here I have to remember to prune it early in the year because it is covered all hours later in the summer
Black napweed, bonus is that the gold finches love when it sets seed.
Slight thread-swerve, but I am happy to be able to say that we’ve seen loads more butterflies this year. They seem to like our two very large budlias. One is so big I have to cut it back so it doesn’t shade the greenhouse too much, but it seems to like it as it grows back more robustly every year. Of course the bees love them too.
Buddleias love to be pruned all the way back to the hard wood on the stems. They flower on this years growth so you can take it back to two or three feet.
Buddleias love to be pruned all the way back to the hard wood on the stems. They flower on this years growth so you can take it back to two or three feet, so you can tailor them to suit most spaces. As long as you cut to just above the last pairs of buds, it’ll just thrive.
The Wisteria.
They bloody love it.
St. John's Wort bush in our garden, always covered in bees, I love watching them and seeing how many different kinds there are.
Oh and lavender, has anyone mentioned that yet?
This weekend it's been Russian Sage and the Hostas. To be fair, not much else is flowering
Veronica/speedwell is very popular in my own garden today.
Catoniasta. By A MILE
This. Nothing else comes even close in our garden.... It's literally covered in bees.
Ceanothus beats everything into a cocked hat.
Ours was massive with a million blue flowers, and a bee on each one.
Plenty on the agapanthus and petunias today but the winner was the raspberry canes. Shame the bees were outnumbered by the raspberry beetles 🙁
We've got a Cabbage Palm in the garden. When it flowers the bees go bonkers for it - you hear the tree humming from quite a few yards away because there's so many bees on it. Smells lovely too (it hasothing to do with a cabbage smell - no idea where the name came from).
Otherwise for 'quick hit now' plants, the lavender.
No idea what it is but I've got a big blue bush that's permanently teaming with bees
Budleia? That's what I was going to offer, always recall them being FULL of bees in summer (I think it's called a butterfly bush though!).
This is the most bee friendly plant in our garden atm. It’s a self seeded teasel, a bi-annual. There are a few in the wild patch but this is on the path, covered in about 9 bees and hover flies.
We returned from a holiday at the weekend and a Sea Holly was absolutely covered in butterflies, wasps, different types of bees and different types of flies
Geranium Rozanne, Erigeron and Penstemon have been popular this week.
Went to the Book Cafe in Belper thus morning and all the lavender bushes around their outside seating was full of big fat happy bees