Here at Lucy's Florist, we're obsessed with bees! Whether it's 'How to Attract More Bees to Your Garden' or 'Purple and Blue flowers Bees Love' we want to make the common household garden a sanctuary for bees to enjoy. In this blog we discuss the best flowers to plant for each season, so you can be ready with a welcome mat for bees, come rain or shine.
Spring
Lavender
Arguable the MVP of bee-friendly flowers, although lavender is most successful in the spring it's a hardy plant that is also known to flourish well into winter in most Australian climates. With a blue, purplish hue and sweet smelling flower, this is a great choice.
Daffodils
Grown from bulbs that can even bloom late in winter, bees love the large colourful petals of the daffodil and their heady pollen.
Flowering Gum
image: Sid Mosdell (Flickr)
These heavy pollinators are vibrant Australian native flowers that look fantastic and are a fabulous source of food for bees and birds. It will delight you each year with an abundance of spring flowers.
Bottlebrush
Hardy, a native Australian plant and great for your garden's eco-system, the bottlebrush is also a fantastic screening tree with red, vibrant flowers that appear in early spring and last until autumn.
Summer
Sunflowers
Bright, cheerful and sunny, sunflowers produce huge yellow blooms that are thousands of smaller flowers pushed together. An abundant pollinator, sunflowers bloom throughout summer and into autumn.
Native Rosemary
Native Rosemary Westringia fruticosa
Another triple threat, native rosemary is a herb, a flowering shrub and bee-friendly plant that flowers most of the year. The Blue-banded bee and Teddy Bear Bee love this neat, hardy shrub.
Calendula
A self-seeding annual, the calendula has large, flat petals that are brightly coloured a festive orange. It flowers throughout summer and provides a good source of nectar for native and introduced bees. It can also be used for culinary and skincare purposes.
Sage – Salvia
A double win, the sage bush not only provides a beautiful herb for cooking with, from mid-spring to mid-summer, the herb bush blooms with beautiful purple Salvia that looks amazing and is a favourite for bees.
Autumn/winter
Daisies
Native bees and honeybees love these cheerful flowers that come in a range of species. Daisies also tend to have long flowering periods and are hardy plants in the many different climates of Australia.
Borage
Easy to grow in pots if you have a smaller garden, this small shrub with star-shaped blue-purple flowers that bees love also is a herb with a long history of medicinal use.
Nasturtium
A ground-creeper with bright yellow/orange blossoms, these flowers are also edible and are easy to grow.
Support the bees
Planting a bee-friendly, flower-filled garden is a great way to support struggling native bees and honeybees. Plus you can benefit from vibrant flowers that also have medicinal and edible properties - win win! Let us know on #lucysflorist if you've made your garden more bee-autiful this year!
