16 Great Plants for Bees

For this video I selected 16 plants growing on my allotment which are much liked by bumblebees, solitary bees and honeybees. All these plants are easy to care for, like sunshine and are happy in normal garden soil. Most are perennial, some biennial or annual. Many of them are also easy to grow from seed.
If you are interested in planting any of the plants you see in the video here are the full plant names:
1. Crocus species (e.g. C. tommasinianus, C. vernus)
2. Primrose (Primula vulgaris)
3. Poppies (e.g. Papaver rhoeas, P. orientale)
4. Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia)
5. Dyer`s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria)
6. Horehound (Marrubium supium)
7. Borage (Borago officinalis)
8. Scabious (Knautia arvensis and K. macedonica)
9. Giant fleabane (Inula magnifica)
10. Wild marjoram (Origanum vulgare)
11. Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
12. Black knapweed (Centaurea nigra)
13. Viper`s bugloss (Echium vulgare)
14. Sea holly (e.g. Eryngium planum, E. giganteum)
15. Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus, C. sulphureus)
16. Devil`s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis)
Music: "Harmony" & "Sun" by Alan Piljak via Free Music Archive (freemusicarchive.org)

[@ChopsyMiche]

Absolutely stunning, and beautiful music to go with it. Touched my soul. Thank you x

[@MyWildlifeAllotment]

Thank you :-)

[@MPBirds]

Thanks for such lovely video! I'm visiting your channel and blog since a long time, when I grew plants in pots on a terrace. Now I have a little spot with a decent amount of space where I'm starting to plant from scratch a community of flowering plants, taking a lot of ideas and inspiration from your videos and pictures. It's being a bit tricky to stablish the plants since I'm totally new about planting directly on the ground and it's normal to face some troubles (bugs, snails, even occasional floods...) but I'm making some advances and I'm hoping to enjoy a colorful and buzzing spring and summer! Best wishes and keep showing us that wonderful place!

[@MyWildlifeAllotment]

Thank you very much for your comment. I hope all goes well with your new plants, it is nice you have a bit more space now to plant things you (and your local wildlife) will like. If you are new to planting things directly into the ground it is best if you buy larger plants as they are a lot easier to establish than seedlings or plug plants. Larger plants can often be divided which gives you 2 or more smaller plants from just one large one. I will try to post more videos once the growing season starts again, I had no access to the Movie Maker program for a while but have now a new laptop which I can use.

[@MPBirds]

@@MyWildlifeAllotment Thank you very much for answering! Actually I'm sowing seeds from the vast majority of the plants since I have previous experience with it and adding some grown bushes which I can find on shops. On the other hand, it's basically the only way to obtain many of the species that I have chosen because the gardening culture here in Spain is dissapointingly limited and it's impossible to find even many of the most popular garden perennials. What I'm doing currently is to wait until the seedlings are big enough to plant them in their definitive place, since apparently this has worked with some previously planted individuals.

[@MyWildlifeAllotment]

@@MPBirds That is what I am normally doing as well as sowing seeds is much cheaper than buying plants and you get species which are difficult to buy. I am lucky I live in England as there is such a great variety of plants you can buy so sometimes if I don`t want to wait I just get a mature plant. Good luck with your garden, it will be so nice once it is all growing and flowering :-)

[@geneticallymodified1]

Thanks, lovely!

[@johndpeel]

Thanks Nadine: I've got 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15. I think some of the 3s and 7s have seeded from your plot (I'm on 60, we spoke on Tuesday). I have a question: with the perennials, do you raise them in pots/modules before planting them out or do you sow seed directly? Or both? I ask because I've had limited success so far with both approaches. The harebells in particular did not seem to like being transplanted - the seedlings are so delicate.

[@MyWildlifeAllotment]

Hi John With the perennials I normally always sow them in pots first. I mostly sow them in autumn in the greenhouse so they get some temperature fluctuations which some seeds need to germinate. Other seeds need a long winter chilling period. Once the seeds germinate I leave the seedlings to grow on until they get the first true leaves. I then take them out of the pots and plant them in plugs, either singly or with small seedlings as a clump. I leave them to grow in the plug until they are large enough to plant out, sometimes I plant them into larger 7 cm pots to grow on if the weather is not good enough to plant out. With very delicate seedlings such as harebell I don`t transplant, I just leave them to grow in the original pot and then plant out when large enough. I can give you some harebell plants as mine have self-seeded. They don`t really like rich fertile soil and are easily swamped by larger plants so need a place on their own.