Bee A Hero: How Your Landscape Choices Can Help Bees

The landscape industry is in the privileged position of being able to support bees in subtle, but effective ways. APL members design, build and maintain gardens in towns and villages right across the UK and can strongly influence how bee-friendly a space can be.

Here are a few suggestions to help bees and other pollinators in your landscape projects.

• Introduce a diverse planting palette with a long flowering period. Include lots of pollinator friendly plants such as alliums, sedums, native hedging species, salvia and wildflowers.
• Choose plants that are less attractive to pests such as lily beetles or aphids. That way there will be no temptation to use pesticides in the garden.
• Source plants and trees from nurseries who do not use pesticides in the growing process. The RHS offers a list of such growers here. https://www.rhs.org.uk/wildlife/organic-nurseries
• Create opportunities for habitat. Bee habitats are too diverse to discuss in this blog, but include short grass, longer grasses, wall cavities, compost heaps, beneath tree roots, sand heaps and more. Any of these could be incorporated into landscaping projects, even if they’re hidden from view.
• Consider including living walls and green roofs in your design. They’re a great way to provide forage and create undisturbed habitat.
• Include water - bees need to drink!
• Educate your clients, when people understand bees and their fascinating lifestyles, they are more likely to engage in offering forage and habitat for these marvellous creatures. 
• Be imaginative with landscaping materials. Drilling holes into timber fence posts effectively turns them into bug hotels for solitary bees. Whilst strategically placed banks of earth or sand will soon become populated with mining bees. Some bumble bees like to nest under a north facing hedge, others love to make their home in abandoned bird boxes.