Plant Heritage's National Collections play their part in supporting the world's biodiversity. Many of the collections contain plants that are rich in nectar, fruit or seeds - magnets to bees, butterflies, small mammals and birds. Trees and shrubs provide nesting sites and safe habitats, oxygenate our air, capture carbon and prevent soil erosion.
Today there are no longer any wild honey bee colonies left in the UK as a result of disease and habitat loss. The survival of honey bees and bumble bees, who are essential for the pollination of one-third of all the foods we eat, rests on the shoulders of us gardeners and beekeepers.
The
British Beekeepers Association suggests easy to grow perennials suitable for most gardens such as asters and foxgloves (
Digitalis); herbs - mint (
Mentha), rosemary (
Rosmarinus) and sage (
Salvia) in particular; and shrubs and fruit trees such as
Buddleja,
Hebe and
Prunus. There are National Plant Collections for all these plants - why not take advantage of an Open Day to select some varieties suitable for your garden?
Useful leaflets on a wide range of more unusual trees and shrubs that are hospitable to bees can be downloaded from the British Beekeepers' website using these links:
http://www.britishbee.org.uk/files/BBKA_Trees_for_Bees_3-way.pdf
http://www.britishbee.org.uk/files/BBKA_Shrubs_for_Bees_3-way.pdf
The Biodiversity Library - a free online resource from which pupblications can be downloaded or viewed online
Twelve major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The participating libraries have over two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers, and students in their home institutions and throughout the world.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
