The Bee Garden: How to Create or Adapt a Garden to Attract and Nurture Bees

Description

Bees play a vital and irreplaceable role in pollinating our flowers, fruits and vegetables. The more bees in your garden the healthier, more productive and more pleasant a place it will be. Yet bees are declining rapidly and many people, even if they do not wish to keep bees themselves, are asking what can be done on an individual basis to help the bee. This book is a response to that request. It will demonstrate in one accessible volume how each of us can play our part in providing a bee-friendly environment, no matter how much gardening space and/or time we may have. It includes: * How bees forage, what bees you can expect to find in your garden and what plants are best for them. * Why honey bees are so important; what they need to thrive and how they detect and access those requirements; and what varieties of plants are best suited to provide those needs. * How the gardener can offer and maintain a bee-friendly garden, followed by a season-by-season account of what beefriendly plants are in flower and when, and what jobs the gardener can be doing during these times to help bees thrive. * A gazetteer of selected bee-friendly plants, arranged by type of plant in seasonal sub-sections. * Illustrative, practical planting plans, including a culinary herb garden, a potager, a wild flower garden, and a 3 seasons traditional border.

Maureen Little is a professional garden designer and beekeeper and has written widely on her subject, including an article on bees and herbs published in Herbs, the journal of The Herb Society.

'A beautifully illustrated book that makes extremely good reading.' www.mygreenlifestyle.co.uk. 'Beautifully illustrated throughout, this will make you want to stock up on plants and grab your spade from the shed.' Best of British. 'After a morning's reading, we reconvene to discuss our thoughts: the overwhelming opinion is that it is an excellent reference book...a genuinely useful and inspiring reference book and a great gift idea.' The English Garden. 'This beautiful, accessible handbook provides ready-to-use, illustrated planting plans and instructions that will transform even the smallest of gardening spaces into a long-term haven for bees.' Horticulture Week. 'This books is a pleasure to behold, each page is a riot of colour and filled to the brim with photographs of flowers pretty enough to lure in any bee.' Petfocus. 'Well illustrated and clearly written, it's a great guide for anyone who wants to nurture bees without keeping any hives.' Daily Mail Weekend. 'By the end of this book you'll have some great new planting plans to try out.' Garden News