Flowering currant

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus

Which bees, and why

Bumblebee queens dominate — a flowering currant in a suburban garden in March is often the busiest plant in the street. The flowers evolved for hummingbird pollination in western North America and are worked here by animals they were never designed for, which they tolerate well.

A short tubular flower with nectar within reach of a honey bee, and easier still for a bumblebee.

Worth knowing

Good nectar at the most precarious moment of the bumblebee year, from a shrub that requires no attention whatsoever.

Flowering

In flower

March to April (northern hemisphere)

Three to four weeks in early spring, ahead of almost every other flowering shrub.

When nectar flows

Generous, and available in the cool weather of a British March. Its native pollinators are hummingbirds, which is why the flowers are tubular and red.

Year-to-year variation

Very dependable in the garden. Not a honey crop.

Growing it

Conditions

Sun or part shade, any reasonable soil. Entirely undemanding and effectively unkillable.

Size

1.5-3 m.

Native range

Western North America, from California to British Columbia; long naturalised in Europe as a garden escape.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Hedgerow

• Prune immediately after flowering. Pruning later removes next year's flowers.
• The white and darker red cultivars flower as well as the species; avoid the golden-leaved forms, which flower far less.
• Considered dull by many gardeners and worth planting anyway — very little else offers this much nectar in March.

What it looks like

A deciduous shrub with aromatic lobed currant leaves and pendulous racemes of small tubular deep pink to red flowers, opening as the leaves emerge.