In the Garden: Boost your landscape's beauty with bee-friendly shrubs
Plant a variety of bee-friendly shrubs and enjoy year-round beauty and loads of pollinator appeal. Include a mix of spring, summer and fall bloomers, providing nectar and pollen for visiting bees throughout the season. Selecting bee-friendly shrubs suited to the growing conditions and the available space also boosts your landscape’s beauty and reduces maintenance.
Start the season off with dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenia). Its honey-scented white flowers first appear before the leaves, offering food to early foraging bees and other pollinators. The blue-green leaves turn shades of red, orange and yellow in the fall.
Include black (Aronia melanocarpa) and red chokeberries (Aronia arbutifolia) with white flowers in spring; they have great fall color and the black or red fruit persists into winter. These plants tolerate some shade, wet and occasionally dry soil.
Grow the native ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) in those sunny well-drained locations. This durable drought-tolerant shrub also tolerates occasionally wet soil. White flowers with a pinkish tinge appear in late spring and the rugged exfoliating bark adds texture to the winter landscape.
If you are dealing with black walnut toxicity and dry locations, consider planting New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus). This North American native shrub is deer-resistant and prefers full-sun and well-drained soil. White flowers appear in summer that not only support bees and other pollinators, but this plant is also a host for several butterflies.
Your garden will be abuzz with bee activity when growing Kalm’s St. John’s Wort (Hypericum kalmianum). This small shrub is covered with bright yellow flowers in mid-summer. Grow this drought-tolerant shrub in full to part sun and well-drained soil.
For moist to wet locations consider Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Its round white flowers appear mid-summer, inviting a variety of pollinators to the garden.
Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) and Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica) are two more summer-blooming shrubs that are shade and moist to wet soil tolerant. Look for varieties of these deer-resistant shrubs that fit your available space and garden design.
For dry shade consider dwarf bush honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera). This is not one of the invasive honeysuckles but rather a native plant with yellow summer flowers and leaves that turn from yellow to orange and red then purple in fall.
Brighten your late summer and fall landscape with Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus). This large shrub appeals to several specialized bees, prefers full sun to partial shade and is moderately deer resistant.
Finish off the season with Seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides), considered a large shrub or small tree. You and the many visiting pollinators will appreciate the late season, fragrant white blossoms. The rosy-purple calyx persists and the attractive exfoliating bark extends its ornamental appeal through winter.
Protect shrubs that are susceptible to animal damage with an organic repellent like Plantskydd. It is safe for pollinators and rain and snow resistant, which means fewer applications are needed. Apply any repellent you select before animals start feeding and according to label directions for best results.
Adding bee-friendly shrubs is an excellent way to support these important members of our community. Don’t stop there. Consider including some pollinator-friendly flowers in your gardens to further extend the bloom time and beauty of your landscape.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including the recently released Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” instant video and DVD series and the nationally-syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine, and her website is MelindaMyers.com, which features gardening videos, free webinars, monthly gardening tips, and more. She was commissioned by Tree World Plant Care for her expertise in writing this article.
