Turn your garden into a pollinator-friendly haven with colourful, bee-attracting updates that are easy, affordable and stylish.
Sunshine is well an truly on trend this week. With highs of up to 33ºC, and with temperatures already soaring, it’s the perfect moment to tackle some little garden upgrades – maybe those ones you’ve been meaning to do since last summer.
A garden glow-up doesn’t have to be purely cosmetic., either. Small, affordable updates can help wildlife – especially bees and other pollinators – by making outdoor spaces brighter, more inviting and easier to navigate. Planting bee-friendly plants – whether that’s wildflowers in the grass or pots of lavender, heather or sunflowers, will give insects good food sources. But if you want to attract them to your garden in the first place, one of the simplest tricks starts with colour.
According to gardening experts, adding colour to the garden can help highlight food sources for bees and butterflies, when paint is used alongside bright, bee-friendly flowers. Mark Douglas, beekeeper and founder of Bee1 (an initiative to address the decline in bee populations) explains, “Colour is the first thing pollinators notice, and can spot it from a distance, so it helps attract them to a space, it’s then followed by the scent of flowers so to truly support them, those colour choices should be paired with pollen- and nectar-rich plants, water sources and undisturbed nesting spots.”
The easiest place to start is with pots and planters. Cuprinol Garden Shades from £17.98 and can be used on garden wood, terracotta, brick and stone, so it’s a quick way to refresh old containers, tired wooden garden furniture, fences or sheds. Shades such as Cornflower, Pansy and Dazzling Yellow are especially good partners for bee-friendly flowers, as bees are naturally drawn to blue, purple and yellow tones.
As well as attracting their attention and providing food sources, you can encourage a healthy garden for pollinators by providing a good water source and shelter for bugs. It’s not difficult to make your own bug hotel with an old wooden box packed with twigs and seed pods, or paint one to match your pots, like this Wooden Insect House, £9.99.
To make sure they have somewhere to drink, add a colourful a Bee and Butterfly Bath, £24.99, or simple fill a shallow bowl with water and add some pebbles for insects to crawl in and out on. The Royal Horticultural Society also recommends mowing lawns less often, to allow dandelions, daisies and clover to flower (which we think is a great excuse not to mow).
