Winter forage: plants that flower for bees from November to March

Why winter forage matters more than summer forage

In June a garden is one option among hundreds and a bee has choices. In January it may be the only thing in flower for a kilometre. The value of forage is not just its quantity but its scarcity at that moment, and by that measure a single winter-flowering shrub outperforms a border full of summer perennials.

Three groups depend on it. Honey bee colonies break cluster and fly whenever it reaches roughly 10 °C, and a colony that can replace even a little of what it is consuming enters spring stronger. Bumblebee queens emerging early — increasingly common in mild urban areas, where some now skip hibernation entirely and found winter colonies — need forage at the most precarious moment of their lives. And the earliest solitary bees emerge in February and March into whatever happens to be open.

The six that do most of the work

Beyond those six, two more are worth adding where there is room. Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) flowers from October into December in mild coastal gardens and is one of very few things that will yield a genuine surplus that late. And goat willow supplies the heaviest early pollen in the landscape from February, at a scale no garden plant matches — if there is a willow within range, that is doing more than everything in your borders combined.

The shoulders of the gap

• October and November are covered by ivy, which is the most important autumn plant in temperate Europe and requires only that you stop cutting it — ivy clipped annually stays juvenile and never flowers.
• Michaelmas daisies and sedum carry late August into October and hand over to ivy.
• Calendula will often still be flowering in December in a mild year, which closes the gap from the other side.
• Blackthorn in March and goat willow in February bridge from winter into the spring blossom.

Getting it right in practice

1. Plant in quantity. A dozen crocuses is decoration; two hundred is forage. Bulbs are cheap enough to buy by the hundred.
2. Put winter plants where sun reaches them in January. A north-facing bed is close to useless at that time of year, and the same plant in a south-facing spot will open hours earlier on a marginal day.
3. Site the dull ones — winter honeysuckle especially — where they are not the focus in summer but are near a path in winter.
4. Do not deadhead or tidy in autumn. Standing stems and seed heads are habitat, and cutting them removes the overwintering insects the spring flowers would have fed.
5. Let the ivy mature. It is free, it is already there, and it is the biggest single autumn resource most gardens have.