By Chloe Headdon, Bee the Change Project Officer
For one week in May 2023, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust was absolutely delighted to showcase our Bee the Change campaign at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where it created a real ‘buzz’ among visitors and won a silver-gilt award!
Our stand had two gardens which mirrored one another in layout and used many of the same core materials. The left-hand garden looked ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’ but was also sterile, offering bumblebees no flowers or nesting opportunities.
The right-hand garden, however, used creative planting and bumblebee-focused choices to turn the space into a haven for bumblebees and other pollinators.
Gardens have been shown to provide 85% of all nectar (food for pollinators) within urban areas, and can offer a huge diversity of flowers. Our outdoor spaces, then, have huge potential for bumblebee conservation, and as gardeners we can play an important role!
Read on for a closer look at the different elements of our bumblebee-friendly garden, with planting information and lots of ideas for how you can create a similar space at home!
The Trust worked with Ground Control to develop our 2023 exhibit. We are grateful to Ground Control, Habitat Aid, and Animal Friends for their financial support.
Simple ways to Bee the Change
Click on one of the topics below to find out more:
- Provide a diversity of flowers, throughout the year
- Get creative with your planting
- Make space for a bumblebee nest
- Let flower-rich grass grow
- Create a bumblebee-friendly boundary
- End pesticide use
- Add a pond
- Don’t forget places to hibernate!
- Food for all: grow your own
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Provide a diversity of flowers, throughout the year
Bumblebees need a continuous supply of flowers to feed on all year round. So, Bee the Change by planting things which flower at different times of the year! This will help bumblebee colonies grow over the spring and summer, and finally complete their lifecycles by producing new queens by autumn.
As RHS Chelsea Flower Show took place towards the end of May, our gorgeous herbaceous border featured lots of plants which flower through early and late summer, to help provide bumblebees with a constant supply of pollen and nectar:
- Lavender (Lavendula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’)
- Wallflower (Erysimum ‘Bowle’s Mauve’)
- Foxglove (Digitalis species)
- Lupin (Lupinus ‘Camelot’ series)
- Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis)
- Siberian bugloss / Great forget me not (Brunnera macrophylla)
- Hardy geranium (Geranium species)
- Geum (Geum species)
- Perennial candytuft (Iberis sempervirens)
- Siberian flag iris (Iris sibirica)
- Sicilian honey garlic (Nectaroscordum siculum)
- Giant allium/onion (Allium flavum ‘Giganteum’)
- Honesty (Lunaria annua)
- Bellflower (Campanula species)
- Cowslip (Primula veris)
- Scabious (Scabiosa species)
- Balkan clary/woodland sage (Salvia nemorosa)
- Catmint (Nepeta species)
- Sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus)
- Columbine (Aquilegia species)
Get creative with your planting
Even small gardens have space for lots of flowers if you get creative! Our exhibit featured vertical planting, climbing plants, pots and containers, a ‘green roof’ on a shed, and planting in gaps in paving to provide more food for bumblebees.
Planting within paving
- Thyme (Thymus vulgaris and Thymus ‘Sparkling Bright’)
- Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile)
- Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus)
- Bugle (Ajuga reptans)
- Yellow corydalis (Corydalis lutea)
Climbers
- Himalayan clematis (Clematis montana)
- Early Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum ‘Belgica’)
Green roof on shed
Wildflower roof mix contained a selection of:
- Bladder campion (Silene vulgaris)
- Autumn hawkbit (Scorzoneroides autumnalis)
- Betony (Stachys / betonica officinalis)
- Catsear (Hypochaeris radicata)
- Common vetch (Vicia sativa subspecies Segetalis)
- Bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)
- Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra)
- Common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris)
For the list of plants in our vertical planting, see the ‘Food for all’ section below.
Make space for a bumblebee nest
Did you know bumblebees don’t live in hives like honeybees? Instead, a queen bumblebee will make a nest in spring after carefully choosing the perfect, sheltered spot.
Our exhibit featured a DIY underground nest site made using an upturned terracotta flower pot and a piece of garden hose.
Here are other some simple things you can do to help bumblebees find somewhere to nest:
- Start a compost heap, as bumblebees often nest in them. Just take care not to turn over the compost with buzzing bees inside!
- Leave patches of grass to grow wild. Some bumblebee species nest in long, tangled grass.
- Don’t strim hedge banks. Mice and voles can create underground burrows, which bumblebees might nest in later.
- Put up a bird box. Tree bumblebees like to nest in them! Make sure there’s some dry, natural nesting material inside such as straw, moss, leaves, or wool.
Let flower-rich grass grow
No matter the size, a patch of grass can be converted into a colourful, flower-rich meadow, providing a lot more food for bumblebees than a conventional lawn.
Our exhibit featured a strip of long, flower-rich grass containing:
- Ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi)
- Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)
- Red clover (Trifolium pratense)
- Cowslip (Primula veris)
- Red campion (Silene dioica)
- Kidney vetch (Anthyllis vulneraria)
- Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
A flowering lawn is a neater alternative to a wildflower meadow, using plants which flower on short stems, such as bird’s foot trefoil, selfheal, lawn chamomile, and red clover. To encourage these kinds of flowers to bloom naturally in your lawn, simply reduce how often you mow the grass!
Create a bumblebee-friendly boundary
Instead of putting up a wooden fence, consider installing a native, flowering hedgerow instead! This will help provide food and nest sites for a lot of wildlife, including bumblebees who often nest in the ground at the base of hedges.
Choosing plants which provide nuts and berries can mean a harvest for you, too. Try species like hazel, blackthorn, and dog rose.
The hedge in our exhibit featured:
- Hazel (Corylus avellana)
- Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)
- Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica)
- Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)
- Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa)
End pesticide use
Pesticides are often used by gardeners to control unwanted plants (‘weeds’), insects (‘pests’), fungi, and more. These chemicals can kill bumblebees if they are exposed to high doses, or affect their ability to find food and reproduce at lower doses. ‘Weedkillers’ also destroy the wildflowers that bumblebees need for their food, making it much harder for these vital pollinators to survive and thrive.
You can Bee the Change and create a healthier environment for bumblebees and other wildlife by leaving chemicals on the shelf and embracing a wider diversity of species in your outdoor space! ‘Weeds’ and ‘pests’ are in fact a sign of a healthy ecosystem, and provide a valuable food source for many creatures.
If you do feel the need to control certain species, try some of these chemical-free methods:
- Adopt hand-weeding methods instead of spraying weedkiller.
- Mulching: use natural materials such as tree bark or wood chips on areas where you’d like to prevent unwanted plants from growing. This stops light reaching the soil beneath.
- Use ground-covering plants to take up the space where other unwanted plants could grow. Some bumblebee-friendly options are bugle, sweet woodruff, and hardy geranium!
- Attract natural predators of garden ‘pests’, for example birds, frogs, hedgehogs, ladybirds, and hoverflies. Some simple ways to do this include adding a water source (even a small tub), allowing parts of your space to grow a bit wilder, adding a log pile in a shady corer, or planting native hedge species and shrubs.
- Hand-pick slugs and snails and move them to more than 20 metres away to stop them from returning. It’s easiest to do this at night when they’re active, using a torch.
Read the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s full position statement on pesticides.
Add a pond
Even a small pond can bring huge benefits to a range of garden wildlife. By including lots of flowering plants such as water mint and yellow iris in your pond, it can provide vital food for hungry bumblebees too.
Our exhibit featured an old butler sink which had been repurposed as a wildlife pond, containing:
- Water forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpiodies)
- Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris)
- Yellow iris (Iris pseudoacorus)
- Water mint (Mentha aquatica)
- Pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata)
- Flowering rush (Butomus umbrellatus)
- Water lily (Nymphea species)
- Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum)
Don’t forget places to hibernate
Bumblebee nests have a short, annual lifecycle, relying on flowers for all their food. When their favourite flowers have gone to seed and died off, new bumblebee queens emerge from their nests and begin to look for somewhere safe and cosy to hibernate.
Queen bumblebees will hibernate in a variety of places, from well-drained soft soil, leaf litter, hollow trees or inside tree bark. You can create safe hibernation spots for bumblebee queens by:
- Making log piles (and leaving them alone).
- Leaving dedicated areas of leaf litter.
- Leaving ‘untidy’ or wild areas with longer grass, moss, and cover.
Food for all: grow your own
Many of the food crops that are grown in gardens and allotments need bumblebees and other pollinators to help them turn their flowers into fruits and vegetables.
By growing crops such as tomatoes, apples, peas, and courgettes, you are not only growing food for yourself but also for bumblebees!
In our exhibit we used vertical planting and planting in containers to pack lots of crops, herbs, and companion plants (which are also edible!) into a small space:
- Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)
- Courgette (Cucurbita pepo)
- Cucumber (Cucumis sativus)
- Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)
- Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa)
- Thyme (Thymus coccineus Group)
- Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
- Borage (Borago officinalis)
- Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)
- Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis)
- Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)
- Sage (Salvia officinalis)
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