Tiny gardens, big rewards: how to attract more bees

Inside: In their quest for large plantings to feed an entire colony of honey bees, beekeepers sometimes forget that scout bees need to feed while they work. Designed right, tiny gardens can attract both native bees and thirsty honey bee scouts.

Juice bars for many bees

I was relaxing on a friend’s second-floor balcony in the city of Issaquah, not a stone’s throw from Seattle. It was a mellow spring day, and as we chatted about recipes and interest rates, I noticed bees exploring her itsy-bitsy potted garden. Honey bees, bumble bees, sweat bees, and masons tumbled among the spring ephemerals with the roar of I-90 in the background. I wondered where the bees came from.

In suburban landscapes across the continent, beekeepers raise honey bees in places laden with concrete, asphalt, and chemically perfected lawns. I glanced over the rail to see the glinty roofs of parked cars, a man with a deafening leaf re-positioner, and a maintenance person spraying thick-leaved shrubbery. I could understand an occasional visit from an inquisitive honey bee because they fly so far. But the others? They reminded me that nature always finds a way.

Small gardens in a busy, crowded world

Alongside containers of Virginia bluebells, columbine, shooting stars, and wild geranium, my friend grew a small tree in a large ceramic urn and six pots of mixed herbs: oregano, basil, peppermint, and chives. The plantings lined the sunny end of the diminutive deck, leaving enough room for a modest glass-topped table, two chairs, and a needy cat. Although humble and compact, the garden smelled minty and fresh.

Since that day, I’ve become curious about the potential of small gardens for pollinators. Far from being for humans only, tiny gardens provide way stations for wildlife, places where pollinators can be safe — at least momentarily — from the bustle of human existence. Like picnic spots, they provide a peaceful respite for a fun meal, a refreshing drink, and a moment to frolic in safety.

Can honey bees use a small garden?

Beekeepers often reject the idea of small gardens for honey bees. Why? Floral fidelity. Since honey bees prefer to forage on crops with large numbers of identical flowers, there seems little point in planting a tiny garden for them. Onesies and twosies won’t feed the masses.

But think again. The flying force of any colony comprises foragers and scouts: scouts to search and foragers to collect. Incredibly, some recent research shows that, depending on the time of year, up to 25% of the foragers in a single colony may be scouts.¹ Scouts must discover the enormous swaths of clover, fireweed, or sourwood that feed the colony. But to find those treasures, the scouts clock many miles on their wings. Periodically, they need to rest, refuel, and rehydrate.

A petite garden with a few flowers can help a scout recuperate before she continues searching for nectar, pollen, water, resins, or a new place to live. Like a trucker on an endless freeway, honey bees need a pit stop, something you can provide with a miniature garden.

Some small-space alternatives

You can find many variations on small-space gardens. Depending on your particular setup, you can choose a popular design or mix and match. Here’s a sample of captivating styles.

Vertical gardens

Vertical gardens, also called green walls, provide exciting possibilities. They’re great for small spaces because the garden spreads up instead of out. Vertical gardens are usually supported against a wall, trellis, or fence and used for everything from small pots and soil-filled bags to high-tech planters. They can feature decorative greenery, vegetables, herbs, or flowers even on the tiniest deck.

Some people simply tip wooden shipping pallets on end, attach them to something sturdy, and fill the spaces between slats with plastic bags or flexible pots. Other gardeners construct elaborate hydroponic pools dangling from hooks and linked with piping. I’ve even seen netting hung behind pots to support viney creepers.

Easy-to-reach vertical gardens have many advantages. Weeding is a breeze and watering is simplified. Even deadheading and harvesting require only a fraction of the effort needed for ground-level gardens. And if you like to watch pollinators, you get a front-row seat.

Because the plants are easy to replace, you can quickly swap blooming plants with those that are past. This way, you and the pollinators have something to enjoy all season long. And if you like, you can go with a theme such as blue-flowered plants, fragrant plants, herbs with bee-attractive flowers, moon gardens, or blooms with scads of pollen.

For best results, consider the hours of sunlight your spot will receive, how you will water it, and where the water will drain (especially if it’s on a balcony). Choose plants that are manageable yet adored by bees and other pollinators.

Pocket gardens

Often designed specifically for pollinator or vegetable plantings, pocket gardens can fit where no typical garden dares to go. They usually comprise pots or small raised beds arranged on a porch or balcony like the one in Issaquah, or they may fringe low stone walls, steps, or outdoor seating.

Instead of adding something new, I’ve seen a fire pit, a koi pond, and a sunken swimming pool transformed into attractive below-ground-level planters that bees love. You can repurpose just about any outdoor structure into a pocket garden. Even a narrow planting along a picket fence is popular when space is limited.

Mobile gardens

As the name suggests, mobile gardens are designed for moving. People sometimes plant them in wagons, carts, trailers, or wheelbarrows and move them as the season changes the angle of the sun and the layout of shade.

In the larger sense, the term “mobile gardens” may refer to container gardens you can move from year to year if not during the year. You can bury the plants directly in the rolling containers or in pots within the containers.

The mobility of these gardens allows endless flexibility. You can rearrange or relocate the planter or take them indoors during harsh weather or seasonal changes. They allow gardeners to optimize sun exposure, protect plants from temperature extremes, or create aesthetic variations for special occasions. They work perfectly for pollinators because you can move the planters between blooming periods.

Straw-bale gardens

Straw-bale gardens offer an alternative to planting in soil. You simply haul in rectangular bales, add water, and allow them to “cure” for a few months before you plant. Depending on what you plant, the bales will need about 6-8 hours of direct sunlight per day.

Choose bales that are free from insecticides and herbicides. Most bales have a low number of weed seeds, however, try to avoid hay in favor of wheat, barley, or oat straw to keep hayseeds at a minimum.

Straw bale gardens are perfect for annuals because the bales disintegrate after a year or two. But during those years, the bales can produce a bounty of flowers for bees and produce for you. My bales produced potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and bush beans alongside sunflowers and zinnias.

The toughest part of a straw bale garden is moving the bales. The size of bales varies with the equipment used to harvest and tie them but on average a rectangular bale measures about 32-44 inches long, 16-22 inches wide, and 14-16 inches high. They are deceptively heavy, so you will need some help.

Straw bale gardens offer many benefits:

• You don’t have to dig
• You needn’t squat on the ground to weed or watch pollinators
• You can garden in places covered in concrete, asphalt, or clay
• Your drainage is automatically excellent
• You can position them where sun and shade are best
• You can reposition the garden from year to year
• You needn’t deal with quite so many creepy-crawlies (slugs don’t like scratchy stomachs)
• You don’t need to maintain it forever or haul it away. If you don’t replace the bales, they will compost on their own.

Hanging gardens

My parents lived in a neighborhood of vintage Victorian homes, one of which had wraparound porches on all four sides. I used to wait with wide-eyed anticipation as every spring and summer those porches strained under the weight of hanging planters of every conceivable size and color.

The homeowner hung the pots at all different heights, depending on their content. The flowers were stunning red, white, and blue pollinator magnets with an American flag on each corner post. Throughout spring and summer, the display drew bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, and quite a few amateur photographers. I still envision those lusty porches from my distant past and regret misplacing the photos.

Fairy gardens

If you have kids — or even if you don’t — a fairy garden makes an enchanting addition to any small landscape. You can plant a fairy garden in shallow clay planters, bird baths, flowerpot saucers, or anything that holds soil.

Miniature structures or figurines nestled among the low plantings add to the surreal landscape, something kids seem to love. In addition, you can find low-growing versions of many pollinator plants, or you can use small native flowers, or even groundcover like stonecrop (Sedum spp.), creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum), creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia), or alyssum (Alyssum maritimum).

Additional creature comforts for pollinators

We all know that pollinators need a continuous supply of nectar- and pollen-rich flowers with diverse shapes and colors. But to make your bee visitors deliriously happy, you can add some amenities as well. Here are some optional extras to enhance any bee habitat.

• A reliable water source: All bees need water so consider adding a rock- or marble-filled birdbath, a bucket with floating twigs or corks, or slow-dripping irrigation heads that leak all day. In my pollinator garden, the lamb’s ear is a honey bee favorite. Although my honey bees seem indifferent to the flowers, they adore the downy leaves that capture morning mist and hold it for hours.

• Diversity of habitat: Even in a small-space garden, you can provide a diversity of habitats by choosing plants and planters of various heights and types. By offering a small flowering shrub or tree, a selection of herbs, and some showy flowers you establish different layers and microhabitats. Each one draws different pollinators.

• Target the dearth: To be most helpful to bees, design your garden to feature late summer and fall blooming plants. In spring, your bees will find plenty to eat, but once the summer dearth hits, good flowers are hard to find, especially for the weary scouts.

• Sun and shade: Bees need both sun and shade. They love the sun for its warmth but, like us, they need to avoid too much of a good thing. Provide some of each and let them decide.

• Provide shelter: Bees also need to shelter from rainfall, wind, and predators. With thick layers of vegetation available, bees will often take cover under the leaves or along the stems. During heavy rainfall, I’ve seen bumble bees huddle deep within a foxglove flower, waiting for the clouds to pass like a person at a bus stop.

• No pesticides: In a small-space pollinator garden there’s no excuse for using pesticides of any sort. You can do weeding, debugging, and unslugging by hand in minutes.

• Nesting sites: Because your small-space garden will attract more than honey bees, consider adding a small solitary bee nesting block, a butterfly house, or even a hummingbird feeder with bee guards. If you use straw bales, you will often see teeny bees using the straws for nests. It mesmerized me to discover little bees laden with pollen flying directly into the sides of my straw bales. Sometimes they perched inside the straws to rest and stared at me staring at them.

• Leave some bare ground: You don’t need lots of bare soil, but your solitary bee visitors may want a place to borrow and build a nest, or they may simply want some mud for mortar. Whenever I dig a hole to plant a shrub, the holes quickly fill with mason bees who haul it off in their mandibles. Sometimes I hear them down in the holes, echoing like bees in a gallon jug.

• Minimize soil disturbance: Once your mini garden starts to grow, leave the soil alone. Solitary bees love clay flower pots, so don’t be surprised to see them digging in the soil from a private place under the foliage. If you leave the soil alone, new bees will emerge from the pots the following year.

• Observe and learn: Take note of what plantings the bees love and which ones they ignore so you can tweak your plantings next time around. Every garden is different, so you can’t always predict what will work and what won’t.

Ideal pollinator plants to get you started

You can plant just about anything in your tiny garden as long as it’s appropriate for the size of the container and your local climate. But to get you started, I’ve listed some suggestions.

• Lavender (Lavandula spp.): The nectar-rich flowers of lavender, its fragrance, and its long flowering period make it a bee favorite.

• Sunflowers (Helianthus spp.): If you have room and a stable planter, sunflowers produce abundant pollen and nectar, attracting a wide range of bee species. Their open flower heads provide easy access to the nectar and pollen. Later in the season, birds love the seeds.

• Bee Balm (Monarda spp.): The minty tubular flowers of bee balm, filled with rich nectar, attract bumble bees, hummingbirds, and other long-tongued pollinators.

• Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus): Cosmos are old-fashioned plants, especially the singles. I like them because leafcutter bees visit and steal perfect discs from the petals, leaving a ragged mess. Yes, it’s true. I plant these things so I can watch the bees destroy them.

• Salvia: Salvia varieties produce copious amounts of nectar and the tubular shape of their flowers is ideal for bees. My favorite variety is Salvia guaranitica, ‘Black & Blue’.

• Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea): The vibrant purple coneflower offers nectar and pollen, and its raised cone-shaped center provides convenient landing platforms for bees and butterflies.

• Caryopteris (Caryopteris × clandonensis): Caryopteris is a mint-family shrub with blue flowers and blue pollen. This late-season bloomer supplies nectar and pollen when bees need it most.

• Catmint (Nepeta spp.): Catmint has long-lasting blooms and a strong fragrance. Bumble bees love the nectar and repeatedly forage the small blue flowers alongside honey bees.

• Borage (Borago officinalis): Borage is highly attractive to honey bees because of its abundant nectar production. Its star-shaped blue flowers are easy for bees to access and provide a rich food source.

• Goldenrod (Solidago spp.): Goldenrod blooms in late summer and fall, providing an essential source of nectar for bees when other flowers are scarce. Its bright yellow flowers are attractive to bees, beetles, solitary wasps, and flower flies, all of whom seem oblivious to the wild thrashing of fall winds.

Do tiny gardens make a difference for pollinators?

Tiny gardens absolutely make a difference to pollinators, including ravenous honey bees. Some pollination ecologists believe that just a single pot of flowers on every porch could aid pollinator populations that, especially in urban environments, have trouble flying the distance to the next flower.

This is especially true of minute bees that can’t travel far on a single tank. They need to refuel regularly to keep going, so your tiny garden could make a big difference in their tiny lives.

As far as honey bees are concerned, think of it this way: Providing a small flower garden is like leaving a plate of cookies out for your favorite “girl” scouts. Just go ahead and do it.

Rusty
Honey Bee Suite

Reference

1. Chatterjee A, Bais D, Brockmann A, and Ravesh D. 2021. Behavior of Individual Foragers Involves Neurotransmitter Systems Characteristic for Social Scouting. Frontiers in Insect Science. DOI=10.3389/finsc.2021.664978.

About Me

I backed my love of bee science with a bachelor’s degree in Agronomic Crops and a master’s in Environmental Studies. I write extensively about bees, including a current column in American Bee Journal and past columns in Two Million Blossoms and Bee Craft. I’ve endured multiple courses in melittology and made extensive identifications of North American bees for iNaturalist and other organizations. My master beekeeper certificate issued from U Montana. I’m also an English nerd. More here.