A five-star hotel for pollinators is once again wowing visitors to the Lake District, particularly those with a deep environmental concern for our bees and butterflies and their plight.
The ‘hotel’ in question consists of the bee borders at historic house and garden, Levens Hall and Gardens, in the South Lakes. Bees and butterflies have long been much welcomed guests in this historic Lakeland garden, for which 30,000 plants are grown on-site, each year, by the gardening team.
That fact alone is something of which many visitors are unaware. Levens Hall and Gardens is very much associated with the world’s oldest topiary garden but the spotlight falls far less frequently on the rest of the gardens and the glorious planting within them.
The bee borders can actually be discovered the minute visitors leave the formal topiary garden with its sharp and angular shapes. Moving from that environment into one that is wholly natural, and not at all subjected to the shears, is a brilliant transition. Found in the orchard area of the garden, this relaxed, informal spot is always one of the visitors’ favourites.
In summertime, the plants lovingly tended by the gardening team, led by head gardener Chris Crowder, really spring into life. Seeds that were sown in spring come forth in all their glory as fully fledged flowers, mingling with a mix of hardy annuals specifically selected to be pollinator-friendly.
The bee borders are an absolutely glorious medley of wildflowers and old cottage garden favourites. The latter include poppies, cornflowers, corn marigolds, candytuft and nigella but also lesser-known species such as borage and viper’s bugloss with its spike of blue and purple flowers.
Viper’s bugloss is a huge asset for bees, providing them with both nectar and pollen, as they busily buzz between flowers. Flowering for a lengthy period over the summer months also means lots of opportunity for bees to feast on its food supply. The structure of this plant is also important, as it helps protect nectar from both rain and sun. Add to that its self-seeding nature and there is a guaranteed supply of food for bee guests in future years and not just the here and now.
Thinking about the planting in this way, to consider what insect visitors might want from the bee borders, is all part of the bee and butterfly visitor experience provided at Levens Hall and Gardens. With 13 species of bee already having been lost in the UK, and 35 more at risk, having such a welcoming approach to insect visitors really matters.
In the Rose Garden, the central feature is home to cleomes. or spider flowers as they are also known. These produce a notable amount of nectar, with abundant nectar-filled blossoms on every stem. Butterflies just love the tall spiky stemmed ‘accommodation’ that cleomes provide in this 5-star ‘hotel’, with these plants not just providing them with nectar but also being a larval host plant for some species of butterfly. This means that caterpillars hungrily feed on the foliage, which provides all they need before their transformation into a winged butterfly.
Hummingbird moths are real fans of cleomes and it is always a delight for the Levens Hall and Gardens gardening team to see them hovering in the sunshine whilst collecting pollen.
Other plants doing all they can to assist the bee and butterfly population include heliotropes, with their insect-attracting vanilla fragrance, and cosmos. The latter’s open, daisy-style flowers and flat petals, prove a fantastic landing pad for any butterflies ‘jetting in’.
Harry Potter fans may also be forgiven for thinking there are a few spells flying around the Levens Hall gardens, with both ‘verbena venosa’ and ‘verbena bonariensis’ being names on the lips of the gardeners. These are a late-summer magnet for bees, highlighting how the gardening team think strategically about the year-round pollinator popularity of their planting and the longevity of the nectar and pollen supplies.
All in all, the bee borders are a vital eco-system for bees and butterflies alike and act as a means for the gardening team to engage visitors in conversations about bee and butterfly conservation.
The message is always that visitors can replicate what they see at home, no matter whether they have a decent-sized garden or simply a pot on a balcony of a city apartment. Every bee or butterfly-friendly plant helps and all of those that can be seen at Levens Hall and Gardens can be grown at home.
To be bee-friendly, Chris Crowder recommends not opting for heavily improved bedding plants but looking for old-fashioned plants and varieties. Often, this means avoiding pretty double-petalled plants and looking for old-fashioned, traditional ones.
Double petalled varieties have been produced for aesthetic appeal, not as pollen and nectar providers, and bees and butterflies can actually struggle to access their food supply, because of the double petals. The petals reduce their ability to reach the anthers that produce pollen and the nectaries that are the source of nectar.
Growing some of the bee-friendly varieties from seed is also an approach that works and the RHS helpfully puts a little bee on their seed packets, to tell you which varieties bees relish.
It pays to remember this summer that bees are essential to the survival of humans and are huge supporters of the planet’s environmental health. They, along with butterflies, pollinate a vast variety of crops within our food chain and also help foster the wild plants that provide habitats for so many other species of wildlife.
If that isn’t enough, they also keep things beautiful, adding to the colour and vibrancy that we can see in our gardens and countryside – as proven in the bee borders at Levens Hall and Gardens.
Thousands of bees will be making a beeline for these borders and their 5-star pollinator hotel at Levens Hall and Gardens this summer. Perhaps it’s time you did the same, or at least replicated its impacts at home?