Bring bees to your garden

Bees buzz over wild gardens, so allow the base of a mixed hedge to fill with leaf litter and weeds and grow nectar and pollen rich flowers together with a variety of meadow plants and cornfield annuals.

To draw the bees in, grow single-flowered, cottage garden perennials, such as Delphinium, Poppy, Verbascum, Campanula, Polemonium and Scabious and hardy annuals like Phacelia and wildflowers. Most flowering herbs are irresistible too.

Cranesbill

Cranesbill is a classic cottage garden perennial and common varieties like Geranium Johnson's Blue are always buzzing with bees.

 Gaillardia

Blanket flower. The two-toned Gaillardia cultivars bloom for months in summer if regularly dead-headed and are bright bee and butterfly attractors.

 Plume Thistle

Plume Thistle, Cirsium rivulare atropurpureum, is a less prickly relative of the wild thistle, which flowers in the summer. It like moisture retentive soil.

 Lavender

Lavender. These fragrant, aromatic herbs are the bee's favourite. Use a range of varieties in any sunny, well-drained spot to increase the spread of flowering. English lavenders are hardier and will self-seed into gravel and paving cracks.

Vital plants for the survival of emerging queen bumblebees after hibernation: Aubrieta deltoidea, Ajuga reptans, Crocus, Forget-me-not, Foxclove, Fruit trees, Primula vulgaris, Pulmonaria saccharata, Rosmarinus officinalis, Skimnia japonica.