Tree
92 records
The heavy lifters. Most of the world's honey crops are trees, because a tree flowers in enough quantity in one place to fill a super rather than merely feed a colony.
Plants by plant type
Growth form decides both how much forage a plant can produce and where it will fit. Trees carry the honey crops; perennials and subshrubs carry the long garden seasons.
8 groups · 296 records in the catalogue
Shrub
58 records
Where the long seasons are. Several shrubs flower for months, and the winter-flowering ones fill the hardest gap in the year.
Herbaceous perennial
72 records
The border workhorses. Cut several of these back after the first flush and they flower again, which is how two plants cover four months.
Annual
30 records
Fast, generous and gone. Useful for filling a gap this season, and for green manures allowed to flower rather than dug in early.
Biennial
12 records
Leaves in year one and flowers in year two. Let them self-seed or they are a one-off.
Climber
7 records
Vertical space costs nothing, and ivy on a wall is the single most valuable autumn plant in northern Europe.
Bulb
11 records
The early ones. Crocus and scilla feed emerging bumblebee queens weeks before anything else is open.
Subshrub
14 records
Woody at the base and mostly Mediterranean. Drought-proof, long-flowering and the backbone of a hot dry border.