Nectar-rich beds and baskets

Plant out summer bedding, hanging baskets and containers that provide food for bees and butterflies to help make your garden a wildlife haven, says Hazel Sillver

- Hazel Sillver

ENJOY the sight of bees and butterflies in the garden this summer by selecting wildlife-friendly bedding plants for borders and hanging baskets. Single-flowered choices, such as cosmos, give pollinators access to nectar, whereas traditional bedding plants (including double French marigolds) have such layers of petals as a result of horticultural breeding that the nectar and pollen are unreachable.

On top of this, the single-flowered and semi-double species that wildlife feed on have a more contemporary look, injecting the garden with refreshing new life. Increasingly, councils are planting this type of bedding in parks and on roundabouts, both to help wildlife and to create a modern look.

Another change is that summer bedding is planted in layers, as a border would be, with ‘see-through’ airy plants and tall plants providing height at the back. The days of park flowerbeds being a flat sea of double begonias, pansies and petunias, with not a bee or butterfly in sight, are gone.

Butterflies and bees

One of the best bedding plants for butterflies is sweetly scented heliotrope, such as ice-blue ‘Reva’ and violet ‘Nautilus Power Blue’. They also flock to vervain, including the airy purple Verbena bonariensis ‘Lollipop’, which can be used to create layers, and lipstick-pink Glandularia ‘Sissinghurst’, which looks lovely tumbling out of a pot on the patio.