Fennel
A tall aniseed-scented umbellifer that flowers in flat yellow plates from July to September and is worked by an extraordinary range of small insects. Like all umbellifers its value is architectural — hundreds of tiny fully open flowers on a landing platform — and it is one of the few plants that serves bees, hoverflies and parasitic wasps equally well.
Where not to plant it
Invasive in parts of California, Australia and New Zealand, where it forms dense stands on disturbed ground.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- High
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
- Which bees, and why
- Dominated by small solitary bees, hoverflies, parasitic wasps and beetles. In a vegetable garden it is one of the most effective plants for supporting the predatory insects that control aphids, which is a second and quite separate argument for growing it.
Tiny fully open flowers with exposed nectar, massed on a flat plate. Nothing is excluded.
- Worth knowing
- Good for both in a completely accessible form, over a long late-summer window, from a plant that needs nothing.
Flowering
- In flower
- July to September (northern hemisphere)
Eight to ten weeks through late summer, filling the gap between the midsummer perennials and the autumn asters.
- When nectar flows
- Steady, completely exposed and available to anything that lands. It secretes well in heat and drought.
- Year-to-year variation
- Very dependable. Not a crop.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun, well-drained soil. Drought-tolerant and long-lived.
- Size
- 1.5-2.5 m.
- Native range
- The Mediterranean, naturalised widely.
- Suits
- Small gardens, Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area, Containers and window boxes
- Bronze fennel is as good for insects as the green form and considerably better looking in a border.
- Cut the seed heads before they drop if you do not want seedlings everywhere — it self-seeds enthusiastically.
- Not the same plant as Florence fennel, the bulbing vegetable, though they are the same species and the vegetable will flower identically if left to bolt.
What it looks like
A tall feathery plant with finely divided thread-like aniseed-scented foliage, green or bronze, carrying large flat umbels of tiny yellow flowers.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- Plants that attract honey bees specificallyHoney bees have short tongues and work in large numbers, which means they want different plants from bumblebees. Half the flowers sold as bee-friendly are out of their reach entirely.
- A Mediterranean bee gardenThe one climate where the bee-friendly planting and the drought-tolerant planting are the same list. The Mediterranean gap is not winter — it is the dead of summer, and the plants that solve it are mostly herbs.
- The vegetable garden as bee habitatThe one part of a garden where the relationship runs both ways: bees decide the size of the crop, and the crop — plus what is allowed to bolt beside it — feeds the bees.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?