Plant Portrait

(click to enlarge to full size)

A common sight in the gardens or lanes at this time of year. And there is something so very delightful on seeing a bee disappear into a foxglove and hearing it buzzing around inside like a helicopter in a hangar. I try to plant bee and butterfly friendly flowers in my garden and even allow those wildflowers they can’t get enough of, like dead nettles and Meadowsweet.

Hearing them in the garden is such a pleasure: seeing them land on the delicate petals of the hardy geranium, causing it to swing and sway; flitting from one purple flower to another on the foxglove and the hedge woundwort with the pannier-bags on their thighs bulging with pollen.

Bees – one of the pleasures of summer.

NB: Bees go for flowers in blue, white, purple and yellow: Berberis, bluebell, bugle, flowering currant, lungwort, pussy willow, rosemary, dead-nettle, heathers, aquilegia, campanula, comfrey, everlasting pea, geranium, foxglove, honeysuckle, monkshood, stachys, thyme, cornflower, delphinium, fuchsia, lavender, rock-rose, scabious and sea holly.