Bee friendly low maintenance natural flowers?

[newmumwithquestions]

Hello. Advice appreciated.

We have a mound of earth (about 7 x 5 m?) i’d like to cover with flowers.
We already have trees and will be planting different ones so want lower level cover here. It’s in an area with trees on two sides and a wall on another so is in partial shade, but most (though not all) of the mound does get some sun. Happy to plant different things on the gets sun/doesn’t get sun part of it.

Soil isn’t great- topsoil no longer there and it feels pretty Clay-y to me but I don’t know much about this really so could have this wrong. (the soil is supposed to be chalky in this area).

The garden is bad for bees so I’d really like to give them some food so am thinking native, high nectar, maybe lavender (thought I thought this liked sandy soil and full sun?). I’m happy for it to look pretty wild and meadow like (it’s next to the tree’d area with lots of ground elder and nettles)- self seeding annuals would work well.

Oh and once established I want to do very little work - this area will need to cope with neglect!

Thankyou.

I was going to say pulmonaria is a really valuable bee plant for emerging bumble queens, and handsome all year round with lovely blotched leaves

(Pulmonaria = lungwort)

I grow Astrantia and Aquilegia in my shady courtyard. They're low maintenance and come back year after year. The bees love them both, I also grew some lobelia in hanging baskets and windowboxes, which they were mad for. I'd had very few bees and butterflies in my garden before, and last year (first time I got to grips with gardening) it was buzzing with them.

Don't do what I did though and lovingly tend to a gang of sawfly lavae thinking they were caterpillars.

Our bees love my lavender. We also grow nigella and cornflowers in between. It looks so pretty but they need regular dead heading to keep the flowers and I cut the woody bits of lavender away in autumn.

You could also get some fancy buddlia, not just the common one that grows everywhere as a weed. There are some really pretty ones in other colours/shades than the usual plain purple, ranging from white to a deep reddy purple. It grows anywhere really easily, all we do with ours is hack it down at this time of year and it springs up again with lovely flowers most of the summer and the bees and butterflies love it.

www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/how-to-grow/10-best-buddleias-grow-attract-butterflies/

Seconding the pulmonaria (lungwort). The bees are going crazy for mine, so we're planning on planting much more of it! Flowers quite early too.

You could also get some fancy buddlia
Buddleja buzz is a good little plant. Flowers from around june until late summer, never gets all that big and doesnt spread. We have decided to get a common one too though, the seeded ones arent hard to spot and pull up.

Another vote for lavender and rosemary. they grow well in crap soil and need pretty much no maintenance. Also sage - we have a couple of different varieties including a lovely ornamental red one that flowers all summer.

Ceanothus (California lilac) is fab for bees but might be a bit big for the space you describe.

Sweet williams are good but they don't flower the first year so require some patience!

Oh the Buddleia Conundrum - feeds the butterflies but encourages egg laying too, without feeding the caterpillars. So be careful with buddleia and please consider the entire life cycle.

ceanothus - some are sterile and don't feed bees.
try to see them in bloom in a garden centre and see if there are bees about.

I saw these bee bombs mentioned somewhere recently - probably an expensive way of doing it but sounds quite reliable.

Bees here seemed keen on my blue geraniums last year, as well as lavender, & also campanula (I think blue/purple is as popular as yellow?)

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B077C9BC96/ref=sspa_mw_detail_3?smid=A3FBX4NF0JZLUW&psc=1&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8

I have terrible clay soil- goes rock hard quickly and water logged in winter, doesn't matter how much home brewed compost we dig in. As mentioned above lavender andd rosemary grow well in it, and last year Cosmos seemed to be popular. Also borage, marjoram, and thyme- although the common thyme seems most popular. I haven't had much success with sage, or any other salvia species, previously although I seem to have one at the moment which has lasted a couple of years. I have the perenial geraniums - both blue and pink, which grow like weeds and attract bees. So do chives but they have ended up as a weed- I planted some 20 years ago and am still getting rid of them- similarly grape hyacinths

Loads of good suggestions here. Yy to marjoram, v tough and keeps some leaves over winter. Another plant that does this is bugle - (ajuga) flowers quite early and bumblebees adore it. Other end of the size scale is purple loosestrife. Big clumps of vivid magenta-purple spires in late summer that can top 5' and also loved by bees and butterflies. Self seeds too. But it's definitely a beast!

Borage, cerinthe, and calendula all self seed brilliantly in my clay soil.