THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Harlow Beekeepers
Last Thursday night I was invited to give a talk ‘Planting for Pollinators’ at Harlow Bees, a beekeeping group who help promote the craft of keeping bees in Harlow.
It was an interesting evening exploring how two complementary crafts – beekeeping and gardening – co-exist in there similar aims of helping bees (and other pollinators.)
Below are some notes answering questions the group asked me from the talk:
1. The Best Plants For Bees
- helenium
- sedum
- oregano
- borage
- veronicastrum
- teucrium
- calamint
- eupatorium
- centaurea
- lavender
This research comes from the work done by Rosi Rollings at Rosybee. She has been asking the question ‘which bee-friendly plants attract the most bees?’
You can read why and how she set-up this work in this interview we made with her a few years ago.
2. This is what Helenium, the most valuable plant for bees, looks like…
It is easy to grow, makes a great cut flower and is beautiful too. Get it into your gardens!
3. Remember the following when choosing flowers for the garden…
Right plant, right place – a happy, healthy plant growing in conditions it enjoys will provide preferred forage for the bees.
Plant in blocks of flowers, so that bees don’t waste energy trying to find another nectar/pollen source.
Get some blossoming trees into your gardener early in the year.
Topiary is easier to look after – a plant like Escallonia is great for clipping but also a bee magnet, so can be left uncut (and so full of flowers) until it grows too large for your garden… then you can easily reduce it down to size and let it start growing again, year on year.
4. Using Pesticides, Herbicides or Insecticides will harm your bees
If your garden flowers are suffering from pest damage, plant trees. These will provide somewhere for birds to visit, who in turn will deal with the bug problem.
No flower is too important or special it needs to be sprayed with a poison to make it look better. Plus, the best flowers for bees normally don’t show the art of the plant breeder – note the Helenium above!
5. Plant organic bulbs
You can read all about that in this blog Organic Bulbs.
Or via John Walker, the Earth Friendly Gardener, in the Telegraph.
We will make an order for Bee Friendly Bulbs in the summer, so will let you know then if you want to buy some!
If you live in and around Harlow and want to know more about bees and beekeeping – why not get in touch with the group?
10 Years Of Modern Mint
On Valentine’s day this year (2024) Modern Mint, the company I started when I moved to Essex to explore a fresh, contemporary approach to gardening, will be 10 years old. The cliche is time flies… but it does! So much has happened in a decade, from studying topiary with Charlotte Molesworth, to clipping all over the UK (and eventually in the USA and Sweden) to selling shears and secateurs at garden shows and hiding away my reticence to give talks about gardening and topiary to Horticultural Societies across the UK. Ten years feels a good time to mark a new …
Garden Masterclass Trailer – The Modern Topiarist
In 2022 I did a free video for Garden Masterclass, the Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsley run website that is a treasure trove of the great and good of the horticultural world – well worth looking through all the wonderful talks they have available, like meadow-maker James Hitchmough or nurserywoman Rosy Hardy. They are certainly inspirational! Perfect for watching and dreaming up new ideas during the winter months… As a follow-up to my Topiary Provocations video (which you can see on Youtube for free) I was asked to do a video for their Masterclass series on how to make topiary. …
Charlotte Molesworth’s Garden In The FT
The lovely garden of my mentor Charlotte Molesworth is featured here in the Financial Times in the last week or so… She has been interviewed lots of times but I thought this was a particularly great piece, with some photos done at unusual angles and different parts… so well worth a read. For more on topiary by Charlotte Molesworth…