Best Bee-Friendly Plants for UK Gardens
Twelve RHS-cited plants that feed honey bees, bumblebees and specialist solitary bees through the year. Native and garden picks for SE London clay.
Twelve RHS-cited plants that feed honey bees, bumblebees and specialist solitary bees through the year. Native and garden picks for SE London clay.
The UK has more than 270 species of bee. Most people only ever notice the honey bees and bumblebees, but the rest, the solitary bees, mining bees, mason bees and leafcutters, do an enormous amount of the pollination in a garden. Some of them are extreme specialists that depend on a single family of plants. Plant the right things and they show up.
This guide is the bee-planting shortlist we use when we design a wildlife-friendly garden. Twelve plants drawn from the RHS plants for bees list and their top ten plants for specialist bees, picked for how reliably they grow on heavy London clay. No chemicals, ever.
Before the plant list, get the principles right. The RHS Plants for Pollinators programme rests on a small handful of rules. Most of the missteps we see in gardens come from breaking one of these, not from picking the wrong plant:
Hit those five and almost any decent plant list will work. The twelve below give you a strong year-round base.
The country has been losing pollinators for decades. Habitat shrinks, chemicals creep into more gardens, and a lot of the planting that does go in is the wrong kind: too many double flowers, too much bedding, not enough of the small unfussy plants that bees actually feed on.
The flip side of that is that every garden matters more, not less. Even a small SE London back garden, planted thoughtfully and kept chemical-free, is a real island of habitat. A row of lavender on a paved patio in Peckham is genuinely feeding bees that have nothing else within blocks. Multiply that across a neighbourhood and you have a corridor of safe forage where there used to be a desert.
You do not need acres. You need a few of the right plants, in flower for as much of the year as you can manage, and a firm rule against chemicals. The rest follows.
A bee-friendly garden is more than a list of plants. It is the order they flower in: snowdrops and crocus in February, hellebores in March, willow into April, then the main summer cast, then sedum and ivy carrying the late autumn. We plant pollinator gardens across South East London as part of our wildlife garden design service, priced bespoke to your garden, never a fixed package. Send us a photo and we will talk through a year-round plan.
The plants below are not arranged by alphabetical order. They are arranged loosely from late winter through to late autumn, so you can build a year-round bee garden by picking one or two from each part of the list. The aim is no flowerless gap longer than a few weeks across the whole season.
Where the RHS specifically calls a plant out as supporting a particular specialist bee, we have said so. Specialist bees only feed on certain plant families, and there is a real satisfaction in planting the one thing that brings them to your garden.
None of the picks below need anything unusual to grow in heavy London clay. Where a plant prefers free drainage we have flagged it.
Each entry includes which bees the RHS-cited research highlights, when it flowers, and which suit heavy London clay. Pick a handful and build out from there.
The defining summer bee plant for a UK garden, and a deliberate RHS Plants for Pollinators choice. Bumblebees, honey bees and a long list of solitary bees all work the flower spikes through June and July. Lavandula angustifolia "Hidcote" is a reliable compact form. Wants full sun and free drainage; on heavy clay, plant on a slight mound or in a raised bed.
Long flowering, drought-tough and beloved by bumblebees. Hardy salvias such as Salvia nemorosa "Caradonna" hold spikes of dark purple flowers from June into September. The herb sage (Salvia officinalis) is just as bee-friendly and gives you cooking herbs. Both want sun and drained ground.
Native UK biennial; the deep-throated purple-pink spires are designed by evolution for bumblebees. Watch a bumblebee disappear inside a foxglove for the entire length of its body. Likes light shade and damp clay, which makes it perfect for SE London. Self-seeds reliably once established.
The RHS specialist-bee list singles out the three native scabiouses as essential plants for the small and large scabious mining bees. Pale lilac pincushion flowers from June into autumn, brilliant for hoverflies and butterflies too. Knautia is the toughest on clay; devil's-bit scabious likes damper ground.
The RHS calls out bellflowers as the food plant of the bellflower blunthorn bee and the small scissor bee. Native common harebell (Campanula rotundifolia), clustered bellflower (C. glomerata) and nettle-leaved bellflower (C. trachelium) are all worth planting. Peach-leaved bellflower (C. persicifolia) is the easiest in a garden border.
The most important early-spring bee plant in the country. Goat willow and grey willow flower in late winter and early spring when little else is in bloom; the RHS lists them as the host plants for Clarke's mining bee, the early colletes and several other specialists that emerge before the main bee season. Even a small willow in a corner makes a real difference.
The first proper nectar of the year. A naturalised carpet of crocus through a lawn in February brings honey bees out on the first warm afternoon. Snowdrops are valuable for the very earliest flying bumblebee queens. Plant in autumn for spring flowers.
The last great nectar source of the year. Mature ivy flowers in September and October just as the ivy bee (Colletes hederae) emerges; the RHS lists the ivy bee as a specialist that only flies for a few weeks and depends almost entirely on ivy. Leave a stretch of mature ivy to flower on a fence or a tree and you will see the difference.
The RHS wildlife garden plant guide calls sedum a "real plus for bees and butterflies". The big flat flowerheads of Sedum "Herbstfreude" and Hylotelephium spectabile flower in late summer to early autumn, exactly when many other garden plants are slowing down. Easy on clay; cope with drought.
The food plant of the wool-carder bee, which strips the silvery hairs from the leaves to line its nests. The RHS specialist-bee list calls it out specifically. Soft pewter foliage and rose-pink summer flowers. Wants sun and drained soil; brilliant edging plant.
The RHS Plants for Pollinators list specifically includes hellebores. They flower February to April when the early queen bumblebees are out looking for nectar and there is almost nothing else open. Tough, shade-tolerant, long-lived perennials. Helleborus x hybridus is the easy one for a SE London garden border.
An honest non-native bee plant. Cosmos is on the RHS pollinators list and flowers continuously from July to October if you keep deadheading. Open-faced, single flowers in pinks and whites; bumblebees and hoverflies pile in. Annual, easy from seed, perfect for filling gaps in a new border.
A bee-friendly garden is one that has something in flower across as much of the year as possible. The plan we use across SE London works in four blocks:
Late winter and early spring (February to April): snowdrops, crocus, hellebores, willow catkins. These feed the queen bumblebees and the early mining bees when nothing else is open. Plant snowdrops and crocus in autumn for spring.
Late spring (May and June): foxgloves, bellflowers and the first scabious. Lavender and salvia start cranking up by mid-June.
Summer (June to August): the main event. Lavender, salvia, scabious, lamb's ear, cosmos all working at the same time. This is when the garden hums in the warm middle of the day.
Late summer to autumn (September to October): sedum and ivy. Sedum carries the late bumblebees and butterflies; ivy feeds the specialist ivy bee and the last queen bumblebees before they go into hibernation.
This always surprises people. Plant a few of the right things and the bees show up almost immediately. We have planted lavender on a Wednesday and watched a leafcutter bee on it on the Friday. Hellebores brought out the first bumblebees of the year in a Crystal Palace garden we did three weeks after we planted them. Bees find new nectar fast.
What takes longer is the depth and variety. In year one you will mostly see the bumblebees and honey bees you would have seen anyway. By year two the longer-tongued bumblebees turn up, and the smaller solitary bees, leafcutters and masons, find the garden. By year three, if you have planted host plants like scabious or bellflower, the specialist mining bees that depend on them are part of the regulars.
Stick with it. A chemical-free, well-planted bee garden gets richer every year. There is no "finished" point; it just keeps improving.
If you want to plant a pot of lavender and a few crocus, you absolutely should. That is exactly the kind of bee-friendly gardening the RHS encourages. The hard part of a fully bee-friendly garden is the year-round planning: which plants flower in which weeks, which suit your light, which work on heavy clay, and how to keep something in flower without a gap.
That is what we do in our planting plans and wildlife garden design service. We pick the year-round mix for your light, soil and aspect, plant it, and come back to maintain it chemical-free. Same named gardener every visit, no chemicals on any plant, ever.
A bee-friendly garden is one of the most satisfying jobs we do. Your gardener Josh designs a year-round mix around your light, the heavy London clay and what you want to attract, then plants it. Bespoke and priced to your garden, never a fixed package, because no two gardens want the same plants.
There is no single best plant. The best strategy, the one the RHS recommends, is a mix of plants from spring to late autumn so bees have nectar across the year. If you can only plant a few, lavender, salvia, foxglove and a scabious give you a strong summer base, with a willow or crocus for early spring and an ivy for late autumn.
Both, in a deliberate mix. The RHS recommends a mix of flowering plants from different parts of the world, weighted slightly toward UK and northern hemisphere natives. Some UK specialist bees only feed on specific native species; the broader pollinator community feeds happily across native and non-native garden plants.
Double or multi-petalled flowers have so many petals that the nectar and pollen are physically inaccessible to bees, and often the breeding has reduced or eliminated the nectar itself. The RHS explicitly advises avoiding doubles for pollinators. Stick to single, open-faced flowers where you can see into the centre.
Bees see well into the blue, purple and yellow end of the spectrum and only weakly in red. That is why so many of the RHS bee picks are purple-blue: lavender, salvia, scabious, bellflowers. Including those colours alongside yellows, whites and pinks gives the broadest mix of pollinator visits.
Yes. Many of the best bee plants grow happily in containers: lavender, salvia, cosmos and herbs such as thyme and oregano are all strong in pots. A small SE London back garden of three or four well-chosen pots can support real bee activity. The RHS has a dedicated patio plants for bees list.
Never use insecticides, herbicides or chemical pest controls on plants in flower. The RHS is firm on this point. A garden of perfect bee plants sprayed with chemicals is worse for bees than a garden of imperfect plants left alone. We never use chemicals on any garden we work on.
Yes. Pollinator and bee-friendly planting is part of every wildlife garden design we do. We pick the specific plants for your aspect, the heavy London clay and the flowering windows that matter most for your local bees. Bespoke and priced to your garden, no fixed package, with no travel charges anywhere in South East London.
A wildflower meadow is one of the most generous things you can plant for bees, so it is worth reading our how to create a wildflower meadow guide alongside this. For the full design service, visit our wildlife garden design service page.
Send a photo of your garden on WhatsApp and we will recommend a year-round bee planting plan for your light and soil. Bespoke design, no fixed package, no chemicals.