Bee friendly flowers for your garden and cutting patch
Many of the seeds that we sell at Higgledy garden we recommend as they make great cut flowers, so we are always looking for varieties that have a good vase life, have nice long stems and have a range of flower shapes and textures and that is often much of the focus of my blogs. However I’m also keen to encourage wildlife into my garden and I love to grow lots of flowers for bees and other insects. I love the sound of bees buzzing while I’m pottering round the garden. I’m looking forward to hearing that sound again after a what feels like a long cold winter, who doesn’t get excited by that first sighting of a bee and I always make sure I have some early flowers in my garden that will give them a bit of nectar, especially Pulmonarias, Hellebores and Crocuses. I’m certainly no expert on bees but I do try and take time in the spring and summer and look at some of the different types, there are 26 different species of bumblebees and you may find at least 6 in your gardens. I really recommend reading some of Dave Goulson’s books especially Gardening for Bumblebees which will explain more about the plight of our bees and what we can all do to help. He’s got some great guides for how to identify the different types of bumblebees and other solitary bees to be found in your gardens and also other pollinators such as Hoverflies, Wasps, Beetles, Butterflies and Moths. He also discusses some of the plants that you can grow in your garden to encourage them, many of them can be grown from seed and that we sell here at Higgledy Garden.
Here are some of my favourites. See the Higgledy Seed Sowing guide for more detailed sowing information for these varieties.
Borage is not just that blue flower that you get in your Pimms or summer salads, its so much more than that and I think one of the best flowers for nectar for bees. Its very easy to grow from seed and will thrive best in a sunny site but can cope with some shade. Once you have sown it once it will often self seed but they are easy to dig up so never really cause a problem. It produces prodigous amounts of nectar (topping itself up every two minutes) and flowers for months. The star-like flowers are edible, probably one of the most beautiful of the edible flowers with its dark black stamens.The plant can grow up to 1m tall when really happy and may need some support. March is a good time to sow these if you want to sow undercover or wait till April and they are really easy to sow directly into your bed and borders.
Cerinthe, another from the Borage family, and is another prodigous nectar producer hence its common name of Honeywort. Its one plant in my cutting patch that I know will be humming with the sound of bees in the summer. Beautiful glaucous blue foliage with purpley blue flowers with a white tip. Again this is easy from seed and I’ve sown some in the autumn that I’m hoping will flower a bit earlier but I’m also planning on sowing some more in March to create a bit of succession. The dark black seed can be sown directly or into 9cm pots in a greenhouse or on a windowsill. It may seed also around but its also easy to collect seed from for next year. Its a wonderful foliage flower to use in your arrangements.
Here it is on my old allotment mingling with some Chives (also loved by bees!).
Two other members of the Borage family that are worth growing are Echium ‘Blue Bedder’ and Phacelia. Echium is a good one to sow in March and the bees will thank you for it. The plants prefer a sunny spot with good drainage and can seed around if happy. The flowers fade to a pinky colour and its another hairy leaved plant. I also use it as a filler in my arrangements but I grow it more for the bees. The white form is also loved by bees too. 
Phacelia is super speedy from sowing to flower and is a really good one for direct sowing, good to sow into weed-free good cultivated soil in March or April and you will soon have those lovely unusual flowers in pale blue. Its loved not only be bees, but hoveflies and wasps. You can use it as a green manure but its best to dig it back into the soil before it flowers, helps improve soils structure. It’s surprisingly long flowering as a cut flower and has a delicate scent. 
Foxgloves, another must have for a bee-friendly garden, and we sell them in shades of white, Digitalis ‘Alba’ and Apricot, Digitalis ‘Apricot’ but I still think my favourite is the purple form. Foxglove ‘Excelsior’ is mix of the pinks, purples, and whites. I just love those stately spires in my garden and that sound of the bee tucked into the flower buzzing away. They are biennials so seed is sown in May/June time for flowering the following year. Foxglove seed is tiny so surface sowing in a seed tray is a good idea and sow as thinly as you can. Once established in your garden they will seed around and you can dig them up and move them to their final places in the autumn or early spring. They are tough too and can grow in shade as well as sun.
The daisy family or Asteraceae contains many species that are brilliant for pollinators like Cosmos, Calendula, Chrysanthemum, Cornflower, Corncockle, Dahlia ‘Bishops Children’, Echinacea, Rudbeckias, Scabious and Sunflowers. You all know how much I like Cosmos from my recent blog post but I must also recommend it for a bee-friendly garden, most importantly the single flowered one with that big yellow central boss that the bees hone in on. You can’t beat the simple beauty of Cosmos ‘Purity’ and Cosmos ‘Apricotta’ is a joy to me. These are half-hardy annuals so susceptible to frosts so hold off sowing for a bit longer. They are quick to germinate and grow fast and tall once planted in the garden so they may need some support but they will be covered in bees from the word go. They are prolific flowers, the best cut and come again flower in my cutting patch and will keep flowering till the frosts if you keep deadheading them or picking them for the house. As I’ve said before the yellow centre is nearly always occupied by a bee in my garden, and also loved by Hoverflies. In fact they must come with a warning that you can often accidently pick them with the bee still attached and hanging on! Here’s Cosmos ‘Fizzy Rose’ doing its bee magnet impression.
And Cosmos ‘Sensation’!
They are just a joy in a vase.
Cornflowers are another great choice, read more in my blog about them here. They are loved by bees and the flowers are long lasting and long flowering especially if you keep dead-heading.
Calendula are just so cheery flowers that they always have a space in my cutting patch. Sunny daisy flowers in shades of oranges and yellows they also go really well with the blue flowers in my patch like Echium and Cornflowers. Here is Calendula ‘Indian Prince’ with Salvia ‘Oxford Blue’.
This is Calendula ‘Ice Maiden’ just waiting for a bee to land.
Dahlias you may not immediately this of as great pollinator friendly flowers and certainly the big pompom types and the fancy-pants ones aren’t, but go for the single flowered varieties like Dahlia ‘Bishops Children’ and you are really on to a winner. They are very easy to grow from seed, I sowed some and put them on my window sill about 10 days ago and they have germinated already and will soon be ready for pricking out and potting on. They, like Cosmos, are tender too so don’t plant out till after the frosts have passed but they will flower well in their first year and late in to the autumn. Then you can dig them up once the frosts arrive and they will have developed a nice tuber. If you protect this over winter you can plant them again next year for an even bigger display. The ‘Bishops Children’ seedlings also have lovely dark foliage which contrasts beautifully with the bright shades of oranges and reds.
Sunflowers, we have many varieties of sunflowers mostly chosen because they are good for cutting that don’t produce a single stem with one flower, they are branching varieties that produce side shoots and more stems once you have cut the first flower. They are all still loved by the bees though. Sunflowers are great to grow with kids are they are nice big seeds and reliable to germinate. Wait a bit longer for sowing these as again that are not frost hardy. April is a good time to sow these and they are a good late flowerer in your garden. This is Helianthus ‘Summer Lovin’.
But I think my favourite is Sunflower ‘Valentine’ which is a smaller flower that I use in alot in my arrangements.
Umbellifers, I just love these in the garden, and who doesn’t love the hedgerows filled with that most famous Umbellifer, Cow Parsley, in May. Just a fabulous froth, I grow the dark leaved form in my garden Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’. They are not generally popular with bumblebees but loved by Hoverflies and Beetles. Anything that encourages Hoverflies is a goodie in the garden as the Hoverfly larvae are also voracious predators of greenfly. There are also some brilliant annual umbellifers such as Daucus carota, Dill, Ammi visnaga and Ammi majus that are easy to grow from seed sown now. Daucus carota, just look at that beautiful flower head. A platform for pollinators, I’ve seen this out in the meadows near us covered by soldier beetles. 
Ammi visnaga is another flower that has an automatic place in my cutting patch not just for cutting but for the pollinators, but it would just look gorgeous in your garden borders too. Its a great filler flower and I use it lots in my arrangements.
If you don’t want to sow the individual varieties then we have a couple of options of Bee Friendly Mixes. The 4g mix which is good to cover a square metre. Then there is the 60g mix which covers 20 square metres. The mixes includes Larkspur, Escholtzia, Cosmos, Cornflowers, Borage, Phacelia, Nigella and Calendula. Sow directly on a prepared site once the soil has warmed up in April.
So just a few of my favourite bee-friendly plants that you might want to have a go at growing from seed for your garden this year. In the UK we have about 22 million gardens and if we all grew a few flowers to encourage more insects and bees then surely the world would be a better place. Lets make sure our gardens have a bit of a buzz to them this year!
Wishing you a flower (and bee) filled summer.
Higgledy Anne
(I’m on Instagram anne_hinks if you fancy a follow, I’ve also joined Bluesky Anne Hinks)