How to encourage wildlife into your garden this summer
How to encourage wildlife into your garden this summer
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1/5 Purple reign
If you have some garden soil and plenty of sun, verbena bonariensis is a must for wildlife. It has tall stems which, conveniently, don’t need staking, with piercingly vivid clusters of tiny purple flowers at the top.
Just two or three plants will be enough for most small gardens since they not only come back every year, but will self-seed around the place. Bees (and butterflies) love them.Alamy Stock Photo
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2/5 Gold dust
Goldfinches are also attracted to the seeds of verbena bonariensis.
Alamy Stock Photo
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3/5 Herb garden
Sunny pots and planters of lavender, sage, parsley, rosemary, basil and fennel. Bees love the flowers of these herbs, which can thrive in a sunny windowsill.
Getty Images
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4/5 Daisy daisy
Mexican fleabane is useful for filling in gaps on your windowsill.
Alamy Stock Photo
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5/5 Colour bursts
The colourful, open flowers of black-eyed susans, which will not only fill your outside space with colour but help wildlife to thrive.
Getty Images/Cavan Images RF
This is such a hopeful time of year. Blossom is festooned on the streets and we’re all itching to plant up pots and borders for summer.
But before you click “buy now” or head to your nursery this weekend, give a thought to wildlife, and plant to encourage the birds and bees into your garden.
Plant blooms “with benefits” that will not only fill your outside space with colour and scent this summer but help wildlife to thrive.
Windowsill wonders
Bees love the flowers of thyme, oregano and chives, and these herbs thrive in a sunny windowbox. Buy trailing variegated thyme and oregano to maximise the prettiness, and fill the gaps with thrift (armeria maritima, £4.50, patchplants.com) or Mexican fleabane (erigeron karviskianus, 10 seedlings for £5.95, sarahraven.com).
For a dramatic cloud of purple flowers and soft fragrant grey-green leaves, plant three dwarf catmints nepeta “Blue Moon” (suttons.co.uk, £9.99) in a windowbox.
If there’s space, add dwarf verbena bonariensis “Lollipop” (£6.99, crocus.co.uk) and cosmos “Dwarf Sonata” for added bee appeal.
Nigella and the searing orange Californian poppy are also ideal for sunny windowboxes.
One-stop pots for bees
If you have room for a large pot, pack in several bee-friendly plants and you can provide pollen and nectar for them year round.
Mix trailing rosemary with verbena bonariensis “Lollipop”, one hellebore, one lavender, a trailing thyme, a trailing oregano and a hylotelephium spectabile “Stardust”.
This collection looks great in a large wide container such as a galvanised metal tub. EBay has scores if you search for them.
Perhaps the easiest way to bring bees to balconies or terraces is to plant the “popular for a reason” everlasting wallflower erysimum “Bowles’s Mauve” (crocus.co.uk, £5.99).
One or two of these dotted around your balcony or terrace will bring in plenty of bees and produce cottagey purple flowers almost all year round.
For potted drama the bees will love lavatera “Barnsley”, a pale pink branching plant that looks like a hollyhock and will grow up to 2m.
Other flowers great for larger pots are lavender, Korean mint and rudbeckias (such as hirta “Prairie Sun” and “Sahara”, sarahraven.com), cheerful maxi daisies with open flowers that bees really like. Small pots can be packed with herbs and sea thrift.
Borders for bees and birds
If you have some garden soil and plenty of sun, verbena bonariensis is a must for wildlife. It has tall stems which, conveniently, don’t need staking, with piercingly vivid clusters of tiny purple flowers at the top.
Just two or three plants will be enough for most small gardens since they not only come back every year, but will self-seed around the place.
Bees (and butterflies) love them and, if you leave the stems over winter, goldfinches might come and eat the seeds, swaying on their stems like acrobats.
If you are up for sowing seed, the Bee Friendly Collection from Chiltern Seeds (chilternseeds.co.uk) is a cost-effective way to bring in bees. For £10, you receive six packets of seed: borage, foxglove “Pam’s Choice”, phacelia, cosmos Purity, cerinthe and echinacea.
Sprinkle them on windowboxes, larger pots or areas in the garden and you’ll be rewarded with a big buzz of bees around the flowers this summer.
If you prefer ready-made plants for an easy life, try wildflowers.co.uk which does a Bee Wildflower Plant Collection of plug plants that can be popped into potted compost or garden soil.
Its 50 plug plants for £40 include cornflower, cranesbill, hyssop, scabious, marjoram and wild thyme, and would easily fill an average-sized London border.
Other plants to snap up if you see them are sunflowers, cirsium and catmint (such as nepeta “Six Hills Giant”) — all great for bees. Leave sunflower heads to dry into autumn so the birds can eat the oil-rich seeds.
Climbers for bees and birds
Even the smallest city space has room for a climber, and honeysuckle is probably the best choice to bring in bees and birds. In summer the flowers attract insects which in turn attract birds.
You’ll often see blue tits clambering around honeysuckle pecking off aphids. By autumn, the berries have birds flocking and the foliage is also a great nesting site.
Early Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum “Belgica” and purple-white flowered Late Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera pericylmenum “Serotina”) have the strongest scent, so go for these for small spaces.
And finally...
The good news is that you may already have one of the best bee and bird-friendly plants in your garden already and not even know it.
Good old ivy is always abuzz with bees and provides blackberries for birds such as blackbirds, starlings, and thrushes in the winter. They’re also excellent places for birds to nest.
Plant a variegated variety such as White Wonder (crocus.co.uk, £4.99) because ivy can be the height of elegance too.
