One of the secondary goals of our Green @ Home garden project is to create an environment attractive to pollinators. There's an undeniable pleasure and satisfaction watching bees and butterflies visiting your garden, industriously feeding on nectar and beautifying the garden just with their colourful presence. But what to plant to invite these winged friends?
Attracting Bees and Butterflies Into the Garden
We're fairly new at this gardening business, and there's so much to learn. But there are plenty of reference tools out there, including this excellent site specifically catering to those investigating creating a bee-friendly garden, with a list of 50 different varieties of native flowering plants that attract bees. The list also designates which flowers attract which type of bees (large, small, shiny, native, honey bees), and the plant’s relative attractiveness, or the average numbers of honey bees versus native bees you can expect to find visiting the plant. Here's a downloadable list, or you can use their Bee-Friendly Garden Builder Tool which makes planting a California native bee friendly garden a whole lot easier.
We've already added several varieties of lavender into our garden, and within seconds, bees arrived, lured by the unmistakable fragrance. The aroma from the different varieties are slightly different, but all extremely pleasant (the bees, butterflies, and hornets agree too). We're hoping to add some thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage, catnip and lamb's ear as time goes on (with each paycheck, a few more here and there), hopefully making our garden the most fragrant on the block.
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In addition to adding flowering plants to your garden, a great thing anyone with a yard (even a small one) can do is to avoid all pesticides/herbicides. Many native bees build nests in the ground and can be wiped out by routine lawn maintenance.
As a renter who would love to remove all the grass out front and replace it with native plants, but can't, I seeded white clover everywhere. It's cheap, hardy, nice to look at, and attracts pollinators.
view otis's profile
arza: that's great additional advice about the pesticides (which we'll be avoiding). I'm going to investigate using some white clover as some additional cover.
view gregory's profile
How about participating in the http://www.greatsunflower.org/ project? You can grow sunflowers (they provide the seeds), attract bees, and help record some data about the bees that are in your hood? It's too late to participate this year, but you can sign up for 2009.
view bipolarbear's profile
BTW, you'll be attracting more than the birds and bees if you plant catnip! You'll be getting visits from your feline neighbors. It's more addictive fresh than dried -- my cat drools and groans when she's given a tiny crushed leaf. :)
view bipolarbear's profile
A good link for what plants attrack what bugs-
http://www.farmerfred.com/plants_that_attract_benefi.html
view LoriSF's profile
Try Creeping Thyme. I planted a ton of it between flagstones in my back yard and actually had to remove it because my dogs kept getting stung. It has little blue flowers and attracts a million bees. Also my citrus trees are beloved by bees too!
view LilyC's profile
you have to think twice before welcoming bees into your garden - they might sting! If you have kids or pets, or spend a lot of time outside yourselves - DO NOT do it.
view Nudik's profile
Our lantana & lilac attract butterflies like crazy, but no bees.
view ami's profile
This is awesome I was just thinking about something like this AT rocks!!
view weezerad79's profile
I highly recommend Oregano. It grows and blooms like crazy in my Midwest, zone 5 garden. Oregano spreads a bit, but not as bad as mint. I hack mine back early spring to keep it in bounds, then again before it blooms when its about 8" or so, to have a bunch for the kitchen and to keep it tidy.
It grows ~18" tall, in both sun and shade, with pale lavender flowers. It's totally maintenance-free, covered with many kinds of bees and of course, you can use it in the kitchen!
view kibitzknitz's profile