Why small urban gardens matter more than you might think

Bees do surprisingly well in towns and cities, but they depend on a patchwork of small spaces rather than any single big one. A courtyard, a balcony, a front doorstep or a narrow strip beside the bins all join up to make a route through the streets. A single lavender bush in full flower can be loud with bees on a warm July morning, and that nectar may be the difference between a colony rearing another batch of brood or going hungry. You do not need a meadow. You need a handful of good plants in the sunniest place you have, and a little water nearby.

Find your sunniest spot first

Most of the best bee plants want full sun, which in a small urban garden usually means a south or west-facing wall, a balcony rail, or a paved corner that bakes by midday. Aim for at least six hours of direct light in summer. Warmth matters as much as light: bees are cold-blooded and must warm up before they can fly, so a sheltered, sunlit patch will be worked far harder than a shaded border. If your garden is mostly in shade, all is not lost. Put your pots on the sunniest paving and move them round through the season as the light shifts. Even a warm windowsill of herbs will get visitors.

Three plants that earn their place

If you only grow three things for bees, make it lavender, salvia and borage. Between them they cover early summer, high summer and the late-season gap when nectar is scarcest.

• Lavender. Choose English lavender, such as 'Hidcote' or 'Munstead', rather than the tender French types. It flowers from June into August and is a magnet for bumblebees. It needs sharp drainage and hates wet roots, so plant it in a soil-based compost mixed with a good handful of horticultural grit. Water sparingly once established. Prune lightly straight after flowering in late August, taking off the flower stems and a couple of centimetres of leafy growth, but never cut back into old, leafless wood — lavender rarely regrows from it.
• Salvia. Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna' throws up deep violet spikes from June to September if you deadhead it, and Salvia greggii keeps going into October. Culinary sage earns its keep too, with grey leaves and blue flowers in late spring. Salvias are the great bridge plants of a small garden: they fill the gap between the early flush and the autumn asters, and their flowers are easy for short-tongued bees to work.
• Borage. A hardy annual with nodding, star-shaped blue flowers that refill with nectar remarkably quickly, which is why bumblebees patrol it so obsessively. Sow seed straight into its final spot in April or May — it has a taproot and resents being moved — and it will reach about 60cm and self-seed gently around the garden. The young leaves taste of cucumber, and the flowers look lovely in a jug of cold water.

Round these out with oregano, thyme, chives, catmint, hyssop, alliums, single dahlias and a sedum or two for autumn. Variety of flower shape matters, because different bees have different tongue lengths. Flat, daisy-like flowers suit short-tongued species; deep tubes suit the long-tongued ones.

Growing them in pots and tight gaps

Small gardens usually mean containers, so choose generously: a pot of 30–40cm across holds moisture far better than a tiny one and will not cook the roots. Glazed or plastic pots lose water more slowly than terracotta in a hot corner. Top-dress the compost with gravel to slow evaporation and keep the surface tidy. Water in the morning, at the roots rather than over the flowers, and feed sparingly — rich, leafy growth comes at the expense of flowers. Squeeze plants into gaps between paving too. A lavender planted in a lifted slab will be happier than one in a border that never dries out.

Leave a shallow dish of water

Thirsty pollinators need a drink as much as they need nectar, and a dish of water is the cheapest thing you can do for them. Use a saucer, an old plant tray or a shallow bowl, no more than about two centimetres deep, and add a few pebbles, a piece of cork or some moss so bees can land safely and climb out. Place it near the flowers but out of the fiercest sun so it does not evaporate by lunchtime, and refresh it daily in hot weather to stop it turning into a mosquito nursery. Honeybees will also take moisture from damp gravel or wet compost, so a saucer of soggy pebbles in the shade works just as well.

Keep the season going — and leave a little mess

Nectar is only half the story; bees also need pollen, and many solitary species need bare ground or hollow stems to nest in. Leave one small patch of soil unpaved and unmulched in a sunny spot, and keep standing stems of fennel, teasel or sunflower at 30–60cm over winter rather than cutting everything to the ground. A few fallen leaves and a small log pile in a corner will do more for wildlife than any amount of tidying. Above all, avoid insecticides, especially anything systemic, and skip the double-flowered bedding plants that offer petals instead of pollen. Plant in succession — spring bulbs, early herbs, summer salvias, autumn sedums — and your small urban garden will be busy from March to October.