Top 10 Flowers to Plant to Help the Bees/Butterflies For Spring. Why we love it: Potted plants or those started from cuttings late in the season can be overwintered indoors. Try Little Tommies (Crocus tommasinianus) if you’ve had trouble with squirrels digging up your bulbs in the past. Different bees are active throughout the year, so you'll need flowering plants from spring to winter. Native plants are always a great choice for attracting native bees, but many ornamental flowers will also help feed and support the bee population. Deer and rabbits tend to leave this plant alone. Top 10 Flowers and Plants for Bees. Grow these small early bloomers in full sun or partial shade. The flowers are beautiful, blue, drooping, small, with 5-petal, conjoined, rotate corolla, gathered in curls. Planting crocus in bulk will make an even greater impact in the garden. In this way, you can help not just honey bees, but our unsung native species as well. Plants provide an essential habitat for honey bees with beehives and bee checks. One-third of the food we eat is pollinated by the bees.This relation made flowers and bees really dependent on each … It grows wild as a weed in gardens, vegetable gardens, in landfills, cultivated on plantations. Bees work tirelessly to provide us with our food, but are struggling in the wild. 2. Depending on where the bees are kept, the nature of the honey can change. Here are 10 bee-friendly plants to grow in your garden. Clare Foggett Bees near railway tracks visit brambles later in summer, whereas in spring, it’s crocus and the first of the year’s dandelion flowers that provide bees with their food. Top 5 Flowers for the Bees. Urban beekeeping is all the rage, but what does the honey taste like? 10 Flowers That Attract Bees to Your Garden There’s a lot of talk about bees today. Visit the Ham Yard Hotel’s website to find out more about the hotel’s beehives. Planting both summer and fall blooming varieties will appeal to more bees and you’ll get season-long blooms. One of its appeals: The leaves and flowers are fragrant. One of the best-loved plants by bees, Viper’s Bugloss attracts almost all species of UK bees. The quintessential British cottage garden plant, foxgloves have bell-shaped flowers that are popular with bees. Calendula: Also known as pot marigold, this flower has a long history of helping others out. Bees need 3 things to thrive – food, shelter and water. And you will have plenty of seedlings to share with family and friends! Allowing your chives to flower will attract the bees. 'Produces a pinkish-white honey. The following honey plants and flowers have been proven to produce some of the best honey for beekeeping and we hope that this article will be useful to you for the next honey season. So when you’re selecting plants, be sure to choose those that bloom at various times throughout your growing season. This list only offers a small number of plants that are excellent at attracting bees. Illuminated gardens to visit this Christmas, Bare-root roses: Growing tips and variety recommendations, Winter houseplant care: How to look after your houseplants this season, In pictures: IGPOTY reveals beautiful winning nature photographs, How to make festive dried flower decorations, Enjoy a stunning Hyacinth display this Christmas. 12 Entertaining ‘Bee-haviors’ of Native Bees Hello, Honey: Beekeeping Anywhere for Fun, Food and Good Deeds How to Design a Garden for Native Bees 15 Native Flowers That Feed Native Bees. Spires of large bell-shaped flowers add vertical interest to the late spring or early summer garden. Try Little Tommies (Crocus tommasinianus) if you’ve had trouble with squirrels digging up your bulbs in the past. Bee numbers have steadily been in decline over the past several years but now gardeners are doing their best to grow flowers that will help out our little buzzing friends. My top 10 bee friendly flowers end with the woodland sage or other types of sages are great for pollinators. Look for well-behaved varieties that do not reseed and take over the garden. Single flowers generally produce more nectar than double blooms and are easier for bees to reach inside. Anise hyssop will also attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Bees … Bees are truly essential for sustaining our lives. Planting a diverse array of flowers for bees has been shown to help bee colonies thrive and stay healthy. You’d be forgiven for thinking decidedly ‘urban’. Why we love it: The leaves of this North American native plant can be steeped to make tea. Spring is especially important to bees when the solitary bees are emerging and need nectar. Bees are essential to a garden. Bees are extremely important garden bugs that pollinate many of our favorite edibles and ornamentals. The clear blue star-shaped flowers of borage stand out in the garden. If we all do this together then hopefully numbers will start to increase again. “The important thing is to choose plants with single flowers so they can easily access the pollen,” says Camilla. Elderberry Sambucus nigra Shrub 20 - 60 pounds honey; 600 - 800 pounds pollen per acre Nectar and excellent pollen source Blooms for 10 - 15 days. “Lime flowers give honey a minty taste,” she says. Different bee species have different lengths of tongue, and asters are great for both. You’d be forgiven for thinking decidedly ‘urban’. Top Ideabooks. Southern Living Southern Living. Explore. It is a favorite of not only bees but also hummingbirds and butterflies. Why we love it: Anise hyssop will also attract hummingbirds and butterflies. When in bloom, it displays thousands of tiny white flowers that the bees can’t get enough of. One important note: Bees are sensitive to chemicals, so opt for organic fertilizers and avoid toxic pesticides and herbicides. This North American native produces spikes of blue flowers above anise-scented leaves in late summer. Don’t let the name sway you from planting this bee favorite. The annual variety of elderberry, Sambucus ebulus, is also a good honeybee plant. 1. Phygelius (cape fuchsia) also showed up, perhaps another bedding plant nearby. Some emerge from hibernation as early as February, while others are still flying in November. Deer and rabbits tend to leave this plant alone. Why we love it: One haircut midseason will keep this heat-and drought-tolerant plant looking its best throughout the growing season. To make your task a little easier than before, here is a list of top 10 plants that you can go to help bees to survive even in harsh winters. How to grow plants for bees. Bees and butterflies love their sweet fragrance. This will ensure that bees have a reason to return to your backyard month after month.