Provide food and shelter for pollinators
There are lots of ways to provide food and shelter for bees, butterflies and moths in your garden. Here are our top tips:
- Grow wildflowers and keep them well watered to ensure they produce lots of nectar
- Leave a patch of bare soil in your garden and leave small cracks in garden walls where solitary bees and bumblebees can nest
- Don't tidy up shrubs and borders until late winter or even early spring to give over-winter shelter to a range of pollinators
- Let a patch of grass grow long to provide habitats for egg laying and over wintering of caterpillars
- Grow a range of wildflowers to provide habitats for different species of butterfly to breed. Birdsfoot Trefoil is used for breeding by many butterflies including the Silver Studded Blue, Green Hairstreak, Dingy Skipper, and Common Blue
- Make a bee box by drilling holes in a block of wood (or alternatively you could buy a ready-made one).
Buy a bee box
A bee box will help bees to shelter from the rain and should also help your garden bloom by encouraging bees into it.
We’ve teamed up with Crocus to give Co-operative Members and Plan Bee supporters a 25% discount on an FSC-certified Bee Nesting Box with Zinc Roof – £8.99 (plus £5.99 p&p), reduced from £11.99 (plus £5.99 p&p).*
Instructions
- Click on the 'Buy now' link below, which takes you to the Bee Nesting Box product on the Crocus website
- Click on the 'Buy' button
- Once you have finished shopping, click on the 'Go to checkout' button
- Follow the instructions to confirm your purchases
- Enter the voucher code 200002 in the box on the left hand side and press 'Update total' before you enter your card details
Buy now
* At present, Crocus are unable to deliver to the whole of the United Kingdom and can only deliver to places on the mainland. See their delivery map for details.
If Crocus do not deliver to your area, you can still purchase the bee box from RHS for £12.99 (plus p&p).