Important For Bees

Echium vulgare is a valuable native plant and is exotic enough to earn a place in a flower border. The plant is much loved by almost all bee species. If you don’t want plants that honeybees simply visit, but want to select plants that honeybees clearly love, choose Echium for your garden.

Galega officinalis is an ancient ornamental plant that produces a delightful natural effect in the garden. The plants have handsome foliage and they errupt in spring to produce countless sprays of fragrant lavender-blue flower spikes, each with mini-sweet pea shaped flowers.

Hardy geraniums are undoubtedly one of the most popular groups of plants. Today’s hybrids are the modern flag bearers, they are beautiful, reliable and endlessly various produces jewel-tone, saucer-shape flowers for months at a time. Exceptionally good value this mix always contain a few real rarities.

Geranium 'Orchid Blue' is a simply stunning plant, producing clusters of saucer shaped flowers of a rarely seen shade of pure orchid-blue, each with purple-violet veins. This new-on-the-scene plant soon spreads to form low hummocks of deeply cut soft green, leaves.

The beautiful, soft violet-blue flowers make the meadow crane’s bill one of our most distinctive wildflowers. Perfect for a meadow, it is often planted in gardens as it flowers for a long time, it must be one of our loveliest wild flowers and worthy of a place in any border.

'Dark Reiter’, is a fairly new cultivar originating from 'Victor Reiter' whose namesake was the legendary California nurseryman. What sets this plant apart is the new leaves that emerge a light maroon colour then fade to a purple-flushed deep green, it produces violet-blue flowers in spring.

"Splish Splash" is a fascinating, rare and prized border plant and one of the most beautiful, striking and unusual perennial geraniums. Very easy to grow, the clumps of divided foliage are topped with mauve-blue splashes and flecks on pure white petals, each petal appearing to be individually designed and painted.

Geranium pyrenaicum is a European species and well known for being one of the most floriferous of Geraniums. 'Summer Snow' is an easy to grow, yet hard to find white flowered cultivar which produces profuse quantities of white flowers each with deeply notched petals.

‘Vision Light Pink’ produces masses of large luminescent light pink flowers with red veins from early spring through to late summer. This long-lived, drought-tolerant perennial is useful as a small scale groundcover and in mixed borders. Use it in rock gardens, stone walls or even in container plantings.

A beautiful, robust ground cover variety of the every popular Geranium sanguineum; ‘Vision Violet’ produces masses of large luminescent violet flowers from early spring to summer. The blooms cover this compact, mounding plant with intricately cut leaves.

If there's one plant that can inject a little razzle-dazzle into the border during gloomy late summers it is Helenium. From late July 'Helena' blooms with masses of vibrant blooms in a spectrum of rich colours from gold to mahogany red. Perfect for the back of the border and wonderful for cutting.

Helenium hoopesii is considered by some to be the most valuable of the species. It blooms with bright golden yellow disk florets that each form a kind of rounded knob that transforms the flower from your typical two-dimensional daisy into something much more interesting and sculptural.

Hyssopus officinalis 'Alba' is a much less well known variety of hyssop. Also known as 'White Hyssop' the plants sport bright white flowers from July to October. Widely used as a 'taste enhancing' herb or wildlife plant, the plants are a dark, vibrant green with a spiky, upright habit and narrow tongue-like leaves which have a peppery scent when stroked.

Hyssop, once recognised as a medicinal herb is enjoying a revival with home gardeners. An aromatic herb similar to rosemary or lavender, it makes an excellent low hedge and more unusual alternative to box. The plants are a dark, vibrant green with a spiky, upright habit and narrow tongue-like leaves. 'Pink' Hyssop sports vibrant, pink flowers.

Hyssop is a strong-flavoured aromatic herb which is enjoying a revival with home gardeners. An ideal plant for use in containers or as a low hedge or border within the herb garden. Highly attractive to bees, it makes excellent honey and is a must for any wildflower garden.

This heirloom morning glory originated in Bavaria in Germany and named for the original Seed-saver Baptist John Ott, Ipomoea purpurea 'Grandpa Ott' flowers of intense violet-blue, with a ruby red star. It is a good climber for walls, trellis work or if allowed to scramble through other plants or trees.

Knautia arvensis is an attractive native perennial herb of well drained grassland. It can be found throughout Europe in meadows, rough pasture, hedgerows and verges. Though it is by nature a perennial, it will flower and produce seed the first year if grown as an annual, either autumn or spring sown.

Knautia macedonica has been hugely fashionable for years and is likely to remain so for many more. This lovely and versatile perennial blooms from late spring to autumn with dark-crimson, richly glamorous pompoms. Established plants produce literally hundreds of blooms in one season.