A practical guide from Alison Benjamin from Urban Bees
You do not need a garden to help pollinators. In a place like Clerkenwell, where most of us are working with a balcony, a windowsill, a shared stairwell or a few pots on the pavement, containers are one of the most powerful tools we have. Get them right and a single window box can become a service station for bees, butterflies and moths making their way across the city.
That was the message from Alison Benjamin of Urban Bees, who joined us at the Goldsmiths’ Centre to talk through exactly how to plant in pots for pollinators. Alison spent 20 years as a journalist at The Guardian before becoming a beekeeper, then swapped honeybees for wild bees and now looks after pollinator planting on rooftops and street containers across London. If anyone knows what works in a pot and what does not, it is her.
The full talk is well worth watching, but here are the key ideas to get you started along the Pollinator Path.
Wild bees first
One thing that surprised a lot of people in the room: this is not really about honeybees. Alison explained that research now shows honeybees can actually out-compete the wild bees that are already living in the city, the bumblebees and the many solitary bees. So rather than adding more hives, the most useful thing we can do is grow more food and provide more nesting habitat for the wild pollinators that are here already.
That includes some brilliant characters you can spot in Clerkenwell right now: the hairy-footed flower bee, the red mason bee that fills up bee hotels, buff-tailed bumblebees that barely hibernate any more, and the tiny wool carder bee. Plant well and you invite the whole cast in.
Get the basics right
Before you think about plants, think about the pot.
Alison is not a fan of terracotta. It looks lovely but it is heavy to carry up to a balcony, the water evaporates quickly through its porous sides, and pots can split over winter. Metal troughs heat up and dry roots out fast. Bright plastic pots are practical and can brighten a shady corner. Her own preference is wooden planters, which hold moisture well and can be made to fit any space.
A few essentials she comes back to again and again:
- Free-draining compost. Peat-free, roughly half compost and half grit works well.
- Position. Pollinators strongly prefer to forage in the sun, so give your sunniest spots to your best plants. They will cope with wind, but sun matters most.
- Watering. This is the one most people underestimate. Even drought-tolerant plants produce less nectar when they are stressed and dry, and the whole point is to feed pollinators. If you cannot water easily, choose your plants accordingly and add a mulch on top to hold moisture in.
Plants for every spot
Alison’s real gift is matching the right plant to the right conditions. Here is a starting palette, grouped by situation, aimed at giving something in flower across as much of the year as possible.
A sunny spot Herbs are the easiest win of all. Rosemary, thyme, chives, marjoram, oregano and sage all feed bees and butterflies if you let some of them flower. Add cascading rosemary, perennial wallflowers (Erysimum), Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), yarrow (Achillea), bird’s foot trefoil and scabious for a long, overlapping run of flowers from February right through to September. A dwarf crab apple such as Malus ‘Evereste’ works beautifully in a large pot, underplanted with early bulbs like crocus and grape hyacinth (Muscari), which the hairy-footed flower bee adores.
A windy, exposed balcony Think coastal. Plants that cope with wind by the sea will cope with a blustery balcony too. Try thrift (Armeria maritima), rock rose (Helianthemum), Erigeron glaucus ‘Sea Breeze’, red valerian (Centranthus ruber) and African daisies (Osteospermum). Keep things low so the wind does not thrash them.
Shade and east-facing corners Do not despair if your space is shady, just focus your energy on any sunnier patches first. For the shade itself, try trailing periwinkle (Vinca minor), Tiarella, campanula, pulmonaria (a favourite of the hairy-footed flower bee), Brunnera, bergenia and cyclamen. Alison’s lovely detail: campanula attracts the small scissor bee, the smallest bee in the UK at around four millimetres, which shelters overnight inside the bell-shaped flowers.
Sunny but hard to water Mediterranean plants are not as drought-proof as people assume. South African plants tend to do far better. Agapanthus is close to indestructible in a pot, and nerines flower late in the season. Sedums, or stonecrops, are also superb: they store water in their fleshy leaves and barely need watering at all.
Do not forget the caterpillars
Butterflies and moths need somewhere to lay their eggs, and that means native plants. If you have a corner no one uses, a pot of stinging nettles will feed red admiral and comma caterpillars. Common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) supports the toadflax brocade moth, and any of the mints, along with catmint and marjoram, help the mint moth. Mixing natives with non-natives gives you the best of both: food for caterpillars, and late-flowering blooms that extend the season for adult pollinators.
Homes as well as dinner
Once your flowers are established, you can start thinking about nesting habitat. Plant lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina) and watch for the wool carder bee teasing fibres from its velvety leaves to line a nest. Add small bee hotels, but a golden rule from Alison here: forage first, homes second. Bee hotels should face south or east and sit about a metre off the ground, but there is no point putting one up until there is plenty for the bees to eat nearby. Get the food right and the residents will follow.
Your part in the path
Every planted pot along the Clerkenwell Pollinator Path is a stepping stone, linking gardens, green spaces and street planting into a network a bee can actually travel along. You do not need much: a sunny windowsill, the right plants and a watering can will do it.
Watch the full talk for Alison’s complete plant lists and plenty more detail, then have a look at what you could add to your own doorstep this season. And if you want a monthly steer on the best plants and the bees to look out for, Alison’s newsletter is at buzz-newsletter.co.uk.
Small pots, big difference.
