When Kate Middleton designed her Back to Nature garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, she did not fill it with prize dahlias and clipped box. She filled it with wild trees, a wildflower meadow, a stream, a treehouse, and flowers chosen specifically to feed pollinators. A future queen built a garden for the bees. Take the hint.
A garden that feeds something back
A tidy garden and a living garden are not the same thing. Pollinators are having a hard few decades, and the gardens that actually hum are the ones planted with them in mind. The good news is that a pollinator patch is the least fussy gardening you will ever do. You are being asked to plant generously and then mostly leave it alone. Spring in New Zealand is the moment to start.
Plant the flowers bees actually want
Go for single, open flowers over the frilly double blooms, because a double flower is often so packed with petals that a bee cannot reach the pollen. Sow a spring mix of borage, calendula, phacelia, alyssum and cosmos, all of them bee magnets that germinate fast in warming soil. Add lavender for the long haul. And do not overlook the natives: manuka, kanuka and pohutukawa are working bee plants, not just landscaping. Plant in drifts of one thing rather than dotting singles about. Bees prefer a proper table to a scattering of crumbs.
Let a corner go feral
This is the part that goes against every neat instinct you have. Leave a patch to run wild. A scruffy corner of long grass and self-sown flowers is a five-star hotel for pollinators, and it is Kate's wildflower-meadow idea shrunk to fit a suburban section. Mow less, spray less, and let the clover and dandelions do their quiet work before you reach for the weeder.
Put down the bee-killers
There is no point laying a banquet and then poisoning the guests. Skip the broad-spectrum insecticides that take out the good bugs with the bad. If something genuinely needs dealing with, choose a targeted, bee-safe option and apply it at dusk when the bees have clocked off. Your pollinators, and everything that eats them, will stick around.
Get the kids in the dirt while you're at it
Kate's whole argument was never really about flowers. It was that time spent outdoors, hands in the soil, is quietly good for all of us, children most of all. A pollinator patch is the easiest possible way in. Something sprouts, something buzzes, someone small gets hooked for life.
Want to go deeper? We have already written the field guides: Bringing Pollinators to your Garden and the Bird & Insect Garden Guide. Then browse the kit in Garden Tools and get planting.
