Encouraging Bees and Butterflies into Your Garden

Why Pollinators Need a Hand

Step into any British garden on a warm July afternoon and you should hear it before you see it: a low, contented hum drifting over the lavender. Bees and butterflies are the quiet engine room of the countryside, moving pollen from flower to flower so that fruit sets, seeds form and the whole web of hedgerow life keeps turning. Yet many of our familiar species are having a hard time of it. Loss of wildflower meadows, tidy verges, paving over front gardens and the widespread use of weedkillers have all nibbled away at the places they feed and shelter.

The good news is that gardens matter enormously. Collectively, our plots add up to a patchwork of habitat far bigger than most nature reserves, and even a modest back garden in a town can become a genuine refuelling station. You do not need an acre in the shires or a degree in ecology. A few well-chosen plants, a little purposeful untidiness and a saucer of water will do more than you might imagine.

Plant for a Long, Unbroken Season

The single most useful thing you can do is to make sure something is in flower from February right through to the first hard frosts. Pollinators emerge at different times and need food at every stage of their lives, so a garden that blazes for three weeks in June and then goes quiet is only half a job.

• Late winter and early spring: snowdrops, hellebores, crocus, winter honeysuckle and willow catkins. These are a lifeline for early bumblebee queens waking from hibernation.
• Late spring: wallflowers, honesty, lungwort, comfrey and the frothy blossom of apple and cherry. Leave a patch of dandelions and daisies in the lawn if you can bear it — they are superb early nectar.
• High summer: lavender, catmint, salvia, marjoram, thyme, borage, cosmos and single-flowered dahlias. Plant in generous drifts rather than ones and twos; pollinators find a big block of colour far more easily than a scatter of lonely plants.
• Late summer and autumn: buddleia, sedum, rudbeckia, asters and ivy. Ivy flowers in October and is one of the most valuable autumn nectar sources in the whole country, so think twice before cutting it back.

Where you can, choose single flowers over double. A tightly packed double bloom often hides its nectar behind layer upon layer of petals, which is no use at all to a tired bee. Old-fashioned cottage varieties, herbs and native wildflowers are usually the most generous.

Think Beyond the Flower Bed

Nectar and pollen are only part of the story. Many butterflies need very specific plants for their caterpillars, and those are rarely the pretty ones. A holly blue will lay on ivy, a brimstone on buckthorn, a comma on nettles and a peacock on stinging nettles too. If you can find room for a rough, sunny patch of nettles behind the shed, you may be rewarded with a flutter of freshly emerged butterflies later in the summer.

Trees and shrubs earn their keep as well. Hazel, hawthorn, blackthorn, crab apple, rowan and field maple all offer blossom, and several provide food for moth and butterfly larvae. A native hedge, however short, is one of the best investments a wildlife gardener can make.

Leave a Few Sheltered Corners

A garden that is scrupulously tidy is a hard place to be a small creature. Bumblebees nest in old mouse holes, under compost heaps and beneath log piles. Solitary bees will happily use a bundle of hollow stems or a block of drilled wood placed in a sunny, south-facing spot. Butterflies and moths need somewhere to roost and overwinter, often tucked into dead seed heads, long grass, hedge bottoms or the gap behind a shed.

• Let a corner of grass grow long and cut it only once, in late summer, leaving the cuttings in a heap for a few days so anything hiding can escape.
• Build a log pile in dappled shade; it will rot slowly and shelter beetles, frogs and hibernating queen bees.
• Leave herbaceous stems standing over winter rather than cutting everything to the ground in October. Hollow stems are ready-made bedrooms.
• Avoid pesticides entirely if you can. Even a single spray for aphids can take out the larvae of ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings that would have done the job for you.

Water, Warmth and a Little Mud

Pollinators get thirsty, and a shallow dish of water with a few pebbles or corks floating in it gives them somewhere safe to land and drink. Top it up in dry spells and keep it out of the reach of cats. Butterflies often gather at damp patches of bare earth to take up minerals, so a small puddle of muddy ground in a sunny spot is well worth tolerating.

Warmth matters too. Butterflies are solar-powered and will bask on a flat stone, a gravel path or a patch of bare soil to build up their strength. Shelter from wind is just as important as sunshine, so let a hedge, a fence or a bank of tall planting break the prevailing breeze. A garden that is warm, calm and full of flowers will be found quickly, even in the middle of a city.

Small Changes, Lasting Difference

You do not have to transform everything at once. Start with a pot of lavender by the door, a bucket of water at ground level, and a decision to leave the mower in the shed for a few more weeks. Add a few native plants each year, resist the urge to tidy every last stem, and watch what arrives. Within a season you will notice the hum getting louder and the borders busier — and you will have made your own small, generous contribution to the British countryside, right outside the kitchen window.