Save the Bees! Best Plantings for Honeybees
If you’ve been gardening for a minute, you’ll know that the plight of the bees is always a lively topic. In her new book, Planting for Honeybees: The Growers Guide to Creating a Buzz, author Sarah Wyndham Lewis jokes, “They say if you have four beekeepers in the room, you’ll have six opinions on any given topic! I’ve never found this truer than in researching this book.”
If you’ve been gardening for a minute, you’ll know that the plight of the bees is always a lively topic. In her new book, Planting for Honeybees: The Growers Guide to Creating a Buzz, author Sarah Wyndham Lewis jokes, “They say if you have four beekeepers in the room, you’ll have six opinions on any given topic! I’ve never found this truer than in researching this book.”
Her new book is filled with delightful illustrations along with easy-to-digest information we all need in order to be sure we’re planting wisely for the bees’ best interests. There are Top 10 lists for the best:
• Flowers
• Climbers
• Shrubs
• Trees
Some of the Top Things to Know When Planting for Honeybees
Ms. Wyndham Lewis has a section with 10 important things to know about planting for honeybees. Just three of the ten include:
1 Remember to choose plants for all four seasons
2 Do less mowing and leave the weeds (yes, there are useful-to-the-bees “weed” species!)
3 Think blue flowers—the way honeybees’ see, the best-colored flowers to grow are yellow, blue and green (avoid red as they honeybees see it as black)
10 of the Best Flowers When Planting for Honeybees
1 Allium
2 Borage / Buglose
3 Coneflower
4 Cranesbill
5 Daisy
6 Heather
7 Helenium
8 Lavender
9 Sage / Salvia
10 Thistle
