Best Plants for Bees in a Low Maintenance Garden

Hello, this is my first post

I am currently tidying our front garden in preparation for some new planting. My partner and I currently live at her father's house. I'd love to plant things that are good for bees, but they also have to be relatively low maintenance and preferably evergreen (although that might be a bit limiting). The reason being, if my partner and I move out, her father won't be able to look after it by himself.

Does anybody have any recommendations for planting?

 

Bee Palm comes to mine immediately.

 

Hi and welcome to GC

Lavender is evergreen, fragrant, evergreen, and fairly low maintenance (although it needs a haircut once a year).

Goldenrod, not evergreen, practically zero maintenance, but can take over.

Nasturtium, very low maintenance, quite pretty. Only an annual (in the UK climate) but self seeds easily.

I used to include Sage, but mine keeps getting mouldy.

The list is endless really. I'm sure loads of people will pile on to tell us about flowers they grow that the bees like.

 

Thymes (just needs a trim - useful for cooking with the trimmings!),
Buddleia (needs a severe haircut in early Spring otherwise you won't have space for anything else)

 

It is actually very limiting-most evergreens provide no food for bees and those that do ( aren't sterile like rhoddies) flower in early to mid spring so again no dice.

I would google "summer flowering evergreen"-make sure it is suitable for our UK climate and away you go.


Unfortunately, you can't have your cake and eat it. Gardening is not easy if you have specific requirements, weeds actually provide a good diet for most of our native insects-I suggest you get a few packs of native wildflowers taking note of the flowering times, cover from between March through t September/October, sprinke liberally and then and sit back and enjoy.

 

Lemon Balm is a real bee attractor and apart from cutting back old growth in spring, needs little attention. But not evergreen.

 

Some varieties of honeysuckle and jasmine are evergreen, if you're looking for climbers to go in your list. Personally I wouldn't limit myself to evergreens. I'd choose a few just to keep winter interest, but mostly go for non-evergreen (whatever the term is, decidious? herbacious?) stuff. You can have low maintenance without limiting your self to evergreens.

A good resource for ideas for looking after the bees is the bumble bee conservation trust website. Which is here: http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/

 

clover, heather, mahonia

 

Cotoneaster horizontalis is evergreen and has hundreds of tiny flowers on it, but I'm not sure of its value to bees. However, with some support, it does grow very quickly and several plants can be trained to knit into a nice hedge.

 

Hi
The thing with bees is to try to make pollen available to them early and late inthe year when it is in short supply so if they wake up on a warm winter's day there is something for them to feed on. This is a really good list of hedging plants for bees - most of which are pretty trouble free.

Good luck

John

 

Carpeting thymes, varieties of T. Serphyllum would fit the bill
Sedums are not evergreen and do need cutting down in spring but otherwise take no looking after
Lavender and Hyssop would work but do need an annual haircut

 

Berberis darwinii has beautiful orange/yellow flowers early in the year, if you don't mind the prickles. It makes a terrific barrier hedge that will take a trim after flowering.

 

Bees prefer wild flowers over cultivated ones. I find foxgloves are very popular with the bees. 02

 

Can't believe no-one's mentioned ceanothus yet.

*Very* attractive to bees when it's out, which is mainly spring and then random occasional buds on and off during the year. Evergreen. Low maintenance - just choose one whose final size is what you want, and that's all you need. Maybe a little light pruning once a year at the very most. And utterly bomb-proof and indestructible. They're very popular for council-run areas and other public places, because they need so little work and are virtually impossible to kill.