How bee friendly are our gardens

[Nature's Babe]

RHS has launched a list of 400 bee-friendly plants. In the last 20 years there has been a dramatic 50 per cent decline in bee numbers in Britain. Butterflies are also in decline with three quarters of the 59 species in Britain under threat. This is not only a problem for gardeners, as bees help to pollinate flowers, but the whole country as insects are responsible for pollinating fruit, vegetables and crops we rely on for daily food. Without bees hand pollination would cost our economy dearly. This year the weather is having an effect on bees too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/93 ... lants.html

http://www.soilassociation.org/supportus/enterourraffle

[alan refail]

Having looked at the RHS lists it made me wonder whether it is possible to have so many bee attracting flowers that they don't bother pollinating what we want them to. Just a thought.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustain ... antList_v1

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustain ... werList_V1

[Tony Hague]

My garden should be very bee friendly. DS sowed some "bee friendly" flower seed mix the year before last. Some self-set seed came up last year. They got dead headed, and the waste thrown in the compost heap. The compost I used as a mulch around my fruit trees. Now I have bee flowers everywhere !

[Colin Miles]

Hi Alan - have looked at the RHS lists. Not exactly 'gardener-friendly' are they? Maybe lists of plants to avoid might be more helpful. And info on how and where they grow?

[vegpatchmum]

Yep - we've also sown the bee, bird and butterfly mixes each year and now have an array of Bee friendly flowers all around our garden, as well as Fox Gloves which are steadily marching across the flower beds, and lavenders and a variety of other plants which, judging from the constant hum, buzz and sheer numbers we hear and see each day during summer, the bees and butterflies seem to love.

As for pollinating the veg - we've never had a problem, although I tend to give my squashes and pumpkins a helping hand with the aid of a fine paint brush

The only way to trully help and protect the bees is to restrict the amount of block paving, decking and 'low maintenance' gardens allowed in a given area. Or, at the very least, for planners to insist that areas (size to be on a sliding scale dependent on the size of the development) be set aside for wildlife gardens, for each and every planning permission given from a domestic extension/conservatory to a major estate development

Yes, I know but I can dream can't I? Infilling and the trend for 'low' or 'no' maintenace gardens are, in my opinion, the biggest causes for the decline of the bees

VPM
x

[Nature's Babe]

With all these bee butterfly and bird mixes we should have clouds of beneficial insects soon. Councils seem to be waking up too, on saturday we went past a steep bank that had a landslip onto a road a while ago and it was now a wildflower bank with an infinite variety of wild flowers including bright poppies. hopefully the wildlife will spread the seeds. Concrete and tarmac areas in low maintenance gardens also add to the flood problem more run off into the drains ! Alan and Colin !

[peter]

Don't delude yourself about councils.

They won't put any seed out, that'll have been natural.

[glallotments]

General speaking to be bee friendly don't buy plants with flowers described as pollen frree and avoid double flowers. You need a mixture of flower shapes for different bees - short tongued go for the more open daisy, achillea shapes and long tongued go for flowers with bells and trumpets. Also use a range of colours.

It always amazes me too that the bees love the flowers that we find a bit insignificant like those on gooseberries and currants. We have also had them swarming over our heuchera flowers which incidentally doesn't appear on any lists that I've seen.

[snooky]

I have a Spiraea in my garden which bees enjoy.Most days it is swarming with Bumblebees,white and buff tailed varieties,and the occasional Honeybee.

[Nature's Babe]

Horses for courses gallotments, their eyesight works differently to ours, borage always seems to be an absolute magnet for bees of all kinds, bumbles go for foxgloves, iris and nasturtium and hover flies love the insignificant little green flowers on achocha, and when my thyme flowers it always seems to attract tiny wee moths, whereas nicotinea attracts absolutely huge moths

[glallotments]

Horses for courses gallotments, their eyesight works differently to ours,

It's more the size of the flowers that intrigued me. I know their eyesight is far better in manyways which is why it's hard to swat a fly and that their visible colour spectrum is wider than ours. I wouldn't expect ultra violet to play a part in the attraction to such small flowers though although their eyesight will make them easier to spot. I guess the attraction is that these tiny flowers are very nectar rich. It's ironic that plants use flowers, petal markings, scent etc to attract insect. The flowers are also often shaped to provide a landing platform but then the bees then go for tiny colourless, markingless, virtually scentfree flowers that bend under their weight.

Yes bees love our borage too - I suppose the name is a giveaway - bee's borage.

[alan refail]

I have never seen anything attract such an enormous range of bees, wasps, hoverflies, butterflies and flies as ivy flowers. That's common or garden Hedera helix - very common in our "garden".
Of course, it's too late to attract pollinators to our fruit and vegetables, but it does build up resources for the over-winterers.

[Johnboy]

This year I am growing, correction, trying to grow two varieties of runner bean that are self pollinating but as yet of over 500 bean plants on the plot there is as yet a single flower to be seen! Even my own home collected variety is simply struggling to even get up the poles and still are less that halfway there.
This is the worst year for growing anything in my entire gardening life and I started in 1943.
JB.

[Monika]

We have several insect-friendly patches on the allotment and part of our garden is deliberately left wild with poached egg plant, candytuft, sweet alyssum, phacelia, single pot marigold, cornflower, red valerian, aquilegia and lots of others with, at the moment a long hedge of flowering single roses (rosa rugosa). Unfortunately, in this summer's weather the insects haven't even been greatly tempted by all these.

I hand-pollinated the blossom on our one small apple tree with a was of cotton wool but I think if we get three apples from it, we'll be lucky!