To ask you to help the bees? 🐝

[DowntonCrabby]

Not really AIBU, more for traffic than a bossy demand.

I pledge to make my garden much more friendly this year for bees and other pollinators.

I have a lot of outdoor space at work that I can hopefully encourage more bees into too.

Anyone with me?

Also if you buy honey look at where it comes from
Try to support small local producers

I'm the manager at a rather large crematorium and we have quite large grounds. We are focusing our horticultural efforts on being bee friendly this year. We have already thrown wildflower seeds all over a particularly ugly area so hoping that it'll not only look better but be good for our little bee buddies.

We already have lots of lavender and marigolds...my head gardener loves the grounds and is so passionate about the place the people who come and visit have started to notice and it's a real pleasure to make something so sad into a joyful place that the public like coming to. Well done in raising awareness and let's save the bees

For those of us with small bits of outdoor space, Tesco are selling bee friendly outdoor buckets for a fiver. Sunflowers, cornflowers, sweet peas etc....
Nice coloured buckets/metal pots and obviously great for the bees (assuming I can get the flowers to grow.....!)

DowntonCrabby you could make a bog garden with a very tiny pebble pond if small children are going to be present. I've heard sinking old compost bags (punctured for drainage with a garden fork) is a foolproof way to starting a bog garden. You could also google planting for damp shade

Ferns are perfect for damp shade and give good coverage for wildlife. You could create some mini log piles. Hostas are also great but mine get ravaged by slugs so I don't bother.

Climbing hydrangea would probably cope okay - plant out from the fence a bit. The white flowers will brighten up the corner.

I love fatsia japonica. They like shade and don't like it too dry, I find them quite versatile.

I keep meaning to buy some bleeding hearts.

My ILs accidentally created a bee-friendly lawn in their old age, when they had someone come and cut it but it didn't get fertiliser or weed killer. The result was it was more 'weed' than grass - quite a lot of clover and other low growers. But apart from that, it had a lot of 'solitary' bees in it - DD and I noticed a lot going in and out of holes in it when we were visiting. Not sure what type, maybe mason bees or similar.

OP damp messy areas are fantastic! We have newts and frogs lounging there. I suspect the frogs are there because we love close to a brook but not sure how the newts got there. Have also seen toads. I give the damp areas extra water during the dry summers as the animals there rely on the moisture and pile up logs and sticks hoping to give them shelter. We have an age old camellia that flowers abundantly and a thicket of lilac growing there. I dream of planting a bluebell corner and of a pond but DH doesnt want a pond :(

We have a small pond.

To be honest, despite best efforts it always looks quite awful!
Full of thick green algae...

It is home to lots of newts and insects mind and the outside of it is lovely, it’s surrounded by purple loosestrife which bees particularly love and thrift and campanula but the pond itself is quite horrible.

Not what I expected at all!

I plant lots of flowers each year to attract bees as I love them but sadly so do my cats who try to eat them and on one occasion was sadly successful
Will use hanging baskets this year to try and avoid that!

What a great idea. I love Bee's and have managed to train DH not to be scared of them (he used to be terrified) he even rescued a few on his own last year.

I have noted down all the bee friendly plants that I don't have already.

I'm very much a gardening novice with mixed success. I planted some clematis when we moved in a few years ago and have managed to train it all down the back fence and over the shed - but silly me got the winter flowering version. Do bees still like this? It's due a cut back. I'd be happy to replace with a summer flowering version if not.

When is the best time for planting? I have a few perennials, but usually use annuals for the beds.

Wildlife ponds need be sited in a sunny place. The plants, shrubs, log piles etc around it create the shade. Also use rain water to fill it up. You can make a frog Hotel with a half buried plant pot/flat stones.

Beekeeper here, lovely to see such enthusiasm! Loads of good suggestions here. Rhododendrons are one of the few plants that are toxic to bees in large quantities. With these warm winters bees are often out flying early so it's helpful to plant winter flowering plants - winter honeysuckle (lonicera fragrantissima or purpusiii), mahonia, hellebores, pulmonaria/lungwort. Having a good spread of plants that flower in the June gap helps too, as does allowing your lawn a bit longer between cuts so that clover and other plants can flower. Providing nesting sites for different types of bee is important, and yes to avoiding pesticides and herbicides.

And butterflies. Plant a cabbage or two somewhere and you will be rewarded with plenty of white butterflies.

Great thing for insects including bees is to have clover mixed in the lawn. I have it and since than not only my grass is always green and needs minimum if any water and no feed, but I also have 12 resident bumblebees.
Let it fully flower twice a year and watch how they are over the moon 😁

Do be careful on the insect hotels when it's made for more than 1 kind. They are not as good as the ones for only 1. Diseases spread between bugs that would normally not be that nearto each other.

I sratred taking an interest in my garden a couple of years ago, and I have purposely bought a lot of bee friendly plants.

Hellebores
A mahonia
Violas
Erysium bowles mauve (loads of this - I see bees on them a lot)
Lavender
Foxgloves
Buddleia (dwarf and a typical larger one)
Campanula
Scabious
Penstemons
Lilac
Honeysuckle
Some roses
Alyssum
Poppies
Some daisies

Also plants which allow bees to rest and nest like ferns and fatsia.

I like the suggestion to make shallow bowls/planters with pebbles and put water in the gaps. Great idea. I might add some alpines for interest.

My pond is in a sunny location.

It has a small log pile at the front and surrounded with thrift, campanula and scabious and purple loosestrife and gladioli, the last two are quite tall.
California lilac tree nearby.

But always full of algae!
Planted with lots of native milfoil in the water and I did have lots of water forget me not at the edge but the algae killed all my forget me not (which bees loved!) off 😢

It’s been there about 3 years now.

Love this thread, marking place and off to investigate bee bomb.

I just started getting a vegetable box from Riverford and am cutting out all most supermarket veg.

Apparently clover is quite magical, it replaces various forms of pesticides?

I have some barrel ponds on my patio - the larger ones do get algae but they're small enough to manually remove it fairly well. For some reason the smallest doesn't - it's almost full with aquatic pots containing water forget-me-not, Marsh marigold and a tall spiky thing. It's older than the others, maybe it's got well nutrient-depleted (which is good for ponds, I think). Birds come for a paddle and drink. The dog prefers it to his bowl too, of course! A pebble saucer for the insects sounds like a good addition.

@AlaskanOilBaron it kills of other weeds. And it's fluffy and soft to lie on. Plus it feeds the grass and does REALLY good job on water retention.
I was the only one with green lawn during draught and yet I haven't watered it for weeks at that time.

Cotoneaster is good for the June gap.

PositivePeach winter flowering clematis is great don't worry! I'd be tempted to layer a summer flowing one with it so you get flowers all year round.

Possibly in front of it on an obelisk as they require pruning at different times.

I love clematis but they hate me! I get so few flowers despite planting in the correct aspect and looking after them. The slugs eat the few flowers I have and the leaves grrr. My Dad has loads and he's baffled why mine don't work out.

Planting is good once the soil has warmed up and the risk of frost has passed. April is a good bet although some places will get late frosts until May. Tender things like seedlings can wait until it's warmer to go in the ground.

I'd look at getting some smaller evergreen shrubs and perennials in your flowerbeds so that you don't have to fill the entire thing with annuals every year. The shrubs provide structure and interest through the winter and shelter for insects.
I can recommend some if you like - what direction do your flowerbed/s face?

ps Everyone should check out the gardening forum

Thanks for all the love for the thread and again for all the hugely knowledgeable posts.

We have a good amount of clover on both front and back lawns, I love lying with the kids trying to find a 4 leaf one.

So would people leave mowing every 3 weeks over the summer instead of every 2 to let the clover re-establish? Or longer? We get lots of Daisies and buttercups too if we skip a mow.

I’ll get going with creating a damp stick & log pile in the back corner.

We’re in NE Scotland so it can be quite windy, only a few months of warm temperatures and I think the back garden is E/SE facing.

We have a shady area along the back, it takes a while for light to get in as there are some tall trees in the land at the back. We have an area that gets good light 10-4ish, typically not where we have space to plant anything in the ground but would use loads of pots and baskets.

The front garden has more space to plant but doesn’t see sunshine until much later in the day, although in the summer months that can mean 2-10pm of sunshine.

I have no idea what soil type we have, things that currently grow well are a hydrangea, a peirus and peony roses if these are any indication?

gareth you really know your stuff, could you recommend anything for my W facing, Scottish, late in the day sunshine front garden?

Evening primrose should like that as long as the soil isn't waterlogged.