Bees - I'm having no success

[Bumbleboar]

I am lucky enough to hard a large garden, so am trying to encourage wildlife, especially butterflies and bees. I have created a wild (flower) garden approximately 20 ft by 50 foot at the far end, and it is great at attracting butterflies. However, no success at all with bees. I get more bees in the veggie patch for some reason.

Can you give me some foolproof plants to try please? I have logs, and bee houses scattered about already, and two trees that overhand the wildflower garden already.

Eryngium, Circium and lavender in my garden are cover in bees

The following plants are meant to be great at encouraging bees, we have the bee balm and it seems to be fairly effective (south east) and lavender (i think it's French lavender we have) which is always buzzing with bees

Bee balm
Blackeyed Susan
Stonecrop
Goldenrod
Butterfly Bush
Purple coneflower
Joe-pye weed
Lavender

Ah great. A few things Izzywigs and AromaticSpices that I don't currently have. I will see what i can pick up.
We have loads of lavender, but maybe it's not French - maybe bees prefer French?!

Weirdly, we don't have Bee balm (unless it goes by another name), so will definitely look out for that. Nor Circium, Joe-pye weed or Stonecrop.

Thanks both. I'm determined to get those bees coming!

Good luck!

Bees in my garden go for comfrey, borage and berberis (early flowering shrub).

The Rhododendron bush outside my front door appears to have the entire bee population of Devon on it when it is in flower like this week!

I find simple/accessible flowers that are blue or purple seem to have the most bees for the longest.
Lobelia hasn't been mentioned yet - I get that specifically for the bees! Borage, chives, echinaceas eryngiums are always covered too. And my English lavender does just fine for my bees

I'm in Australia, where some plants bloom at different times.
The herbs; thyme, marjoram, oregano.
Rosemary, lavender.
Buddleia

These worked in the UK too.

Bees in my garden all seem to head for the scabiosa, aubretia and geranium macrorrhizum. Lavender too although that hates my clay soil. Flowering herbs also good - thyme and rosemary at the moment. Honeysuckle later in the summer, and salvia.

Tansy, yarrow, foxgloves, and scabious are all very popular with bees in my garden. Purple toadflax was in a wildflower mix I scattered over a flowerbed, and I let it self-seed now as it's so popular.

Lavender gets us loads. There is also a dense hedge all around our area small dark green leaves with tiny pink flowers and they are always COVERED with bees. My London friend bought me a little bee house a couple of years ago and we thanked her but privately were WTF? Bees seem to outnumber humans round here 👍

Crimson clover and phaecelia. Sow from green manure pack seeds (more for your money) and let them flower.

Borage, and anything from that family is good.

Hebe is good for attracting bees too.

We saw a big bed of catmint at a National Trust property once that was covered in bees.

Purple flowers - lavender, chives, rosemary. Also we have a cotoneaster hedge which gets hundreds on it when in flower.

Aliums. They go nuts for it.

I have a massive (almost tree like) cotoneaster bullatus, but cotoneasters in general will be covered in bees. I imagine it's what ChocEggNoThanks' hedge is made of. My daughter calls ours the bee tree. We like to lie underneath it and listen to the hum.

This is wonderfull! Thank you for all these suggestions I'm loving the idea of Enb76's humming hedge

Now I just have to persuade DH we have to go and try all these things!

My laburnum is humming, ceonothus (have mine covering a fence), foxgloves, buddleia and passionflower