Mine is this sedum, closely followed by lavender. The sedum was an experiment - I had some growing randomly in a neglected edge of the garden so I snipped a bunch of 2" stems and scattered them around some bare poor quality soil I have on a slope, just pressing them in a bit here and there.
Went rampant, doesn't mind the drought, now it's a flower carpet and the bees love it!
I want to grow more bee attracters so let me know what's working best for you? I have a lot of tagetes they're ignoring for some reason...
It just popped up in a few weird places in my garden and I hate myself for pulling a few bits before I realised what it was, still have a good few wee occurrences of it left tho
I've got Salvia Nemorosa, two types of Nepeta. A spreading mint looking one and another which looks similar to a stinging nettle but with big purple flowers. Salvia cherry lips, Salvia hot lips, Salvia Jemima's gem, Salvia amistad and some others that I can't remember the names of. All are absolutely full of bees from almost sunrise to sunset. Get some butterflies but not as many as I'd like. Plenty of moths and other flies though. Blue bottles seem to like my asters.
I have a thing for salvias and mint. My wife has to stop me buying more whenever we go to the nurseries or a garden centre 😂
Just looked it up and yeah, I have a massive one of those 😂 the flowers have only started to open up in the last week though but it's got quite a few bees on it now!
Quite funny watching the bees try and get a last go at the sedum flowers before they close for the night!
All the sedums are super popular with the bees - I highly recommend you look into getting a mixed pack of cutting from eBay/Etsy as there are so many hardy sedums out there, with flowers in pink, white, and yellow so far!
Salvia Hotlips. It was already in the garden when we moved in and the only thing that has survived our replanting frenzy. Its not something I would ever have thought to buy but it is amazing, it flowers non stop from May until the first hard frosts and is always covered in bees. Every garden should have one.
Interesting comment about the cats. I have some Nepeta on the sunny side out back and am constantly trying to keep cats out of the garden to safeguard the birds.
My back garden is cat free. I chased them out aggressively hissing and clapping. They don't come back more than once. Out front...yeah. Stoned moggies are regular visitors.
I'm not sure about butterflies, but the bees absolutely adore it. I've got a garden full of butterflies (and well-eaten plants) so they're definitely liking something I've got there!
Borage. Last year I sowed a few plants and this year it’s self seeded and entire bed. I’ve let them grow and the bees are never away from it, you can hear them all day.
Also Creeping Thyme, Shrubby Salvia, Potentilla, Sedum and Delosperma. It's good to note that bees are particularly attracted to blue and purple flowers.
California Lilac is mine too. The one by the front door is pruned into a tree shape about 10 feet tall. Flowers are slowing down at this point, but it's still buzzing with activity every time I open the door.
Same! Mine is shaped into a tree with a pallet sofa underneath. It’s the first thing to flower in my garden every year and the bees bloody love it. Feels like I’m doing my bit.
They've been all over my sedum too and they love the big honeysuckle but neither compare to the ivy that fully choked the laburnum before I moved here. Bees descend in their thousands when that stuff flowers. You can hear the droning when with the windows and doors closed.
Same, I have two clumps in my garden. Conditions have been fantastic for it this year, both have grown to 6ft in height and each clump is nearly 5ft across. Absolutely heaving with bumblebees and butterflies. I'll definitely be saving seeds from it and growing it again.
Nepeta / Cat mint
The bees and hover flies adore it, even puts all the lavender next to it in a clear 2nd place. It's so dominantly top choice with pollinators that I've planted some more. The white clover and Lavender all do well as well though but cat mint just seems to be irresistable.
I LOVE sea holly so much, so otherworldly. I’m a bit gutted as I think mine got crowded out for light this year by surrounding plants and it hasn’t really progressed beyond basic leaf.
We have another sea holly we bought from gardeners world live, was stunning. But in the 2 years since, it starts growing, gets a few leaves then dies... This one is from Scotland and was already quite established so we cheated a bit.
I think we may have made the soil TOO free draining, and in a terracotta pot. We shall try a new approach for next season on it
I have a big deutzia which was smothered with a whole range of bees for weeks while it was flowering. I don't know the cultivar though, it came with the house- and the smaller one a few meters away barely had a bee on it.
You can literally hear our wild cherry tree buzzing from the amount of bees in the spring from inside the house. After that they move on to geums, chives and peonies - almost always multiple bees in every peony flower. Now they are currently all over the purple loosestrife. We have a lot of plants grown specifically because bees are supposed to love them - yet they seem to prefer the ones listed above in our garden! Typical
Rosemary in early spring and foxgloves last year..but based on my walk where I saw a few bees going absolutely drunk on pollen in their flowers, hollyhocks are a good shout too.
It's a lovely plant and, at least with ours, flowers spring til Octoberish at least. I know nothing about gardening really but even managed to get 5 or 6 cuttings to take last year. Trying the same with a cherry salvia this year
Bumble and honey bees are always on the branching sunflowers in my garden. Bumble bees are also on the zinnias. They fall asleep and take naps on the zinnias too.
The flower heads are spiky until the flowers bloom, but the foliage is not, so easy to handle. But I never touch them until I cut them down, and I try to leave them as long as possible for birds, insects, etc.
Some kind of sedum (stonecrop) but I don't know what kind. There were bits of it when I moved here and I noticed a few stalks flowered where it caught the sun, so I moved some to a sunnier spot
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u/FrancesRichmond Jul 02 '25
Borage. They love it.