With the countryside being altered and fragmented by roads, development and changing farming practices, gardens are now one of the richest sources of nectar for our native insects; the nations gardens, all lumped together, cover more area than all the National Nature Reserves put together so our gardens are a precious wildlife resource.  Anyone who does anything for wildlife in their own gardens is making a valuable contribution to maintaining – or perhaps even saving – native species.

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Of course, this altruistic stance isn’t the only reason to look out for the birds and the bees (and any other wild creature that come visiting), it’s also a pretty self-serving pursuit – though in a good way! First, of course, is that all this visiting wildlife does us and our gardens a world of good. Not only do they pollinate our beans and strawberries and so increase our crops, but they pick off insects and just by being there, encourage other creatures into the garden. When this great big garden party of insects, birds, amphibians and the rest is in full swing we reap huge rewards both in garden productivity and, of course, in the deeply satisfying sight of a healthy, busy corner of the world that we have created.

The time and effort spent planting a bank of nectar-rich plants is a real investment that pays out in the number of insects that visit your garden. These insects can variously help to pollinate the plants that you are growing for fruit or seed, their larva are often voracious hunters of other insects that we consider to be pests, and their presence attracts other beneficial creatures such as birds, frogs and toads that add their own weight in pest control.

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Plants To Include In Your Nectar Bank

A trick to make choosing plants for your nectar bank fairly simple is to understand that if a plant is labelled as ‘Good for honeybees’ it is a fairly safe bet that it will also feed most  other insects.  If a honeybee, with its relatively short tongue, can reach the nectar, then most other insects will also be able to.

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The second thing to understand is that creatures are a lot less fussy about what they eat compared to where they lay their eggs. Insect larva, particularly butterfly larva, generally have very specific feeding requirements, so if you want to provide for the whole life cycle, pay just as much attention to larval food plants as to adult nectar sources.

Insects including bees and butterflies feed both on nectar and pollen, though not all insects feed on both.  Nectar is often likened to a sweet treat, full of quick-release sugary carbohydrates, while pollen is full of nutritious long-lasting protein and fats. A good nectar bank will be well stocked with plants that provide both. When choosing your plants keep in mind that different insects feed in different ways. Some bees, for instance, need a nice wide open landing pad to sit on while they feed, while others, with long, curly proboscis, will select tubular flowers which they know will be left alone by short-tongued creatures and still others have perfected the art of daylight robbery, flying up to the back of a flower and nibbling a hole through the petals to get to the nectar.

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Hoverflies tend to like plants with wide, flat flowers so they can land easily and butterflies and moths like tubular flowers such as buddleia, sweet rocket, Verbena bonariensis, greater knapweed and red valerian.

 

The first thing to do is to decide whether you want a permanent border in the same spot or if you want to shift your nectar border around your plot year on year.  A permanent border can be made up of annuals or perennials or a mixture of both, and can also include shrubs, while a temporary border will need to be restricted to annual species.

It’s a good idea, if you are designing a nectar border for a new garden or allotment, for instance, to restrict yourself to annuals for the first couple of years while you get to know the lie of the land. That way you can settle on a good spot for all the different components in your garden, as well as shift your nectar border around each year, in sync with your crop rotation.

If you are doing wildlife a good turn by deliberately choosing and growing plants which will create a great habitat, it seems a little odd to destroy another habitat in the process. With that in mind, prepare the soil kindly; dig only enough to make planting possible but not so much as to disturb the soil ecology. Worms, beetles and other essential soil dwelling creatures are a lot happier when they are undisturbed.  Remove all perennial weeds, roots and any seeds that are visible and then sow the seed according to instructions on the packet.  Some wildflowers will put more energy into flowering rather than putting on lots of lush green growth if fertilizing is done at the end of the season rather than the beginning.

While the obvious choice is a seed mix containing native annual species of wildflowers, there are other options. An annual border containing cosmos, short and tall snapdragons, pot marigolds, poached egg plants, columbines, annual foxgloves, annual cornflowers, phacelia and dwarf sunflowers will be a constant source of nectar and pollen over three long seasons. All of these plants, planted in large groups, will provide stunning colour for you and will be a constant source of wildlife activity. Keep a special eye open for early and late flowering plants that will fill the hungry gap of early and late foragers.

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Another option is to plant a herb bed. Herbs are great plants for nectar banks because they are so very well endowed with pollen and nectar.  Borage, catnip, thyme, marjoram, chives and the various mints all attract a host of insect visitors and a bank of lavender will be awash with activity for many weeks, its strong scent attracting insects from far and wide.

Plants that belong to the Umbelliferae (now Apiacea)  family such as dill, fennel, caraway, angelica and parsley with their wide, flat landing pads of tiny, nectar-rich florets, are super for attracting hoverflies, honeybees, flies, gnats, beetles, moths,  solitary bees and  bumblebees.

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Babies of seed eating birds are often fed on soft bodied insects while they are small, so your early spring nectar bank will be of special value for these species as the parent birds will pick off myriads of flies, gnats and caterpillars to feed their babies.

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If you can bear it, find an area of ground that is isolated from the main border, perhaps surrounded by lawn , and plant a large bed of stinging nettles. Regular mowing all around the patch will help to keep the nettles in check.  Stinging nettles are the larval food plant for several different butterflies, including peacocks, commas, red admirals, painted ladies and the small tortoiseshell and you will have a veritable butterfly nursery right under your nose.

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A border that includes bird’s foot trefoil, cuckoo flower, nasturtium, wild mignonette and  garlic mustard, planted in clumps rather than singly, will attract a lot of butterflies looking for egg laying sites.  

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Many of the green manures - clovers and vetches, phacelia, buckwheat and the mustards - are wonderful insect attractors. As clovers and mustards must be turned into the soil before flowering to reap the greatest nutrient rewards, the trick is to sow a large patch of these plants as green manures so you can always leave a generous strip standing as a persistent nectar source. Turn the last section in once it has finished flowering. It won’t be quite so beneficial as far as soil nutrients are concerned, but you will have fed a vast number of insects with very little efforts.

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 Comfrey, often used as a green manure because of its nutrient foraging capabilities, is a wonderful plant for attracting bumblebees because of its long flowering season. The long-tongued species have little problem with its tubular flowers and the short tongued species often ‘rob’ the nectar from these flowers by nibbling holes in the back of the flower tubes to access the nectar.

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Is Native Always Best? 

(Hint: Buddleia davidii is native, not to Britain, but to China! In fact none of the 100 or so species of Buddleia are native to Europe!)

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It seems counterintuitive to believe that alien plant species or cultivated varieties could be just as good as native plant species for attracting native wildlife, but it is true.

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If you were setting out to establish a native meadow you would, of course,  select species that were truly native, not only to Britain, but to a very precise locality, but planting an authentically native meadow (or hedgerow or woodland) isn’t the same as the fairly simple job of planting a wildlife friendly garden.

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If your goal is specifically to feed and provide breeding sites for bees, birds and butterflies, then growing any plant that provides them with a bounty of nectar, pollen and seeds is beneficial,  as long as the species you are planting poses no threat to native plants or ecosystems. You wouldn’t, for instance, choose to plant the invasive Indian Balsam in your border, even though bees find it irresistible, as the threat it poses to our native plant species is very real. It crowds out our own native plant species, so the threat/benefit trade-off  is just too great.  

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Fruit And Vegetables That Require Insect Pollination

One very good reason to plant a nectar bank is to encourage pollinators into our fruit and vegetable gardens.

This list includes those plants that are partially self-pollinating but whose harvest increases when pollinated by insects. The plants marked with an asterisks will not set fruit (or seed) without the aid of insect pollinators. And remember, if you want to save your own seed from any plant it must be pollinated – usually by insects.  While peas, some tomatoes and a few other plants are self pollinating, they are in the minority...if you want seeds or fruit, you need insects.

• *Tree fruit, including apples, peaches, pears, plums, quince, apricots, cherries

• *Vine fruit including Passionfruit, blackberry, loganberry, raspberry, tayberry

• *Bush fruit including blueberry, cranberry, blackcurrants, red currants, white currants

• *Cucurbits including gourds, squash, cucumbers, melons, courgettes, watermelons, marrow

• *Bean crops, including kidney, scarlet runners, wax, French, broadbean

• *Seed plants such as dill, fennel, caraway, coriander, cumin

• *Aubergine

• *Rat-tailed radishes

• *Okra

• *Sunflower

• *Strawberries

• Tomatoes, many varieties

• Peppers, many varieties

 

5 Rules Of Planting A Nectar Bank

1. Never use chemical controls to deal with problems - pesticides, herbicides and fungicides and most lawn dressing products are poisonous to wildlife. If there is a warning on the packet to wear gloves or to not eat while you are using the product you can be fairly sure it isn’t a great substance to be spraying anywhere near your wildlife border.

2. Choose a sunny, sheltered spot out of the wind and set up a windbreak if necessary. Bees and butterflies hate to be buffeted about as they are trying to land.

3. Plant in drifts and clumps rather than planting individual plants, or plant a large area of mixed nectar rich plants with no more than 5 or 6 species of plant in total.

4. Choose plants that flower over a long period, and mixtures that cover all the seasons. Some creatures go nectaring on warm days even in the middle of winter.

5. Leave your nectar bank standing until well into spring so that any overwintering creature that is hiding in hollow stems or under leaves has time to wake up and head off into your garden to carry on its good work.

6. Consider allowing some plants to flower that you may otherwise have cut back such as onions, parsley and carrots as these provide very rich rewards to foraging insects.

7. Stick to single rather than double flowers for two good reasons. First and most obvious, the proliferation of extra petals makes it difficult for many bees and most butterflies to access nectar and pollen from the flowers - if there is any to access. Second, selecting plants that produce more and more petals often results in the nectarines and stamens inadvertently being selected out.

 

An annual wildflower nectar mix might include corn poppy, corn marigold, corncockle, annual corn flower and phacelia, knapweed, field scabious and various other flowers.

 

Annual plants to sow in drifts between vegetables or around fruit trees and bushes include nasturtiums, marigolds, cosmos, cornflowers pot marigolds (calendula), daisies and chamomile.

 

Visit the  RHS website and look up their Perfect for Pollinators pages, a comprehensive list of garden and wildflowers that attract these valuable insects into the garden.