Hardy geranium
The most useful genus of ground-covering perennials a bee garden can have, and one that is constantly confused with the tender bedding pelargoniums sold under the same common name. True hardy geraniums have flat open five-petalled flowers with completely accessible nectar, they flower for months, and several will flower twice if cut back.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- High
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
- Which bees, and why
- Worked by bumblebees, honey bees and a wide range of solitary bees. Meadow cranesbill in particular supports several specialist mining bees, and the flat open flower means nothing is excluded.
Flat open flowers with shallow accessible nectar — usable by the shortest-tongued bees as well as by bumblebees.
- Worth knowing
- Good for both across a long season, from plants that grow in sun or shade and require essentially no maintenance.
Flowering
- In flower
- May to October (northern hemisphere)
Species vary. Geranium pratense and G. sanguineum flower in early summer and reflower if cut back; the hybrid 'Rozanne' flowers continuously from June to the first frost.
- When nectar flows
- Nectaries at the base of the petals are freely accessible, and production continues over a very long season.
- Year-to-year variation
- Highly dependable in almost any garden. Not a honey crop.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Sun or part shade, most soils. Among the most tolerant and forgiving perennials there are, and several species thrive in dry shade where almost nothing else does.
- Size
- 20-90 cm depending on species.
- Native range
- Temperate regions worldwide, with many European and Asian species in cultivation.
- Suits
- Containers and window boxes, Small gardens, Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area, Hedgerow
- Cut back hard after the first flush — right down to the base for Geranium pratense and 'Johnson's Blue' — and they produce fresh foliage and a second flowering within a month.
- Do not confuse with pelargoniums, the tender red 'geraniums' sold for window boxes, which are a different genus and considerably less useful.
- 'Rozanne' flowers from June to November without a break and is one of the longest-flowering hardy perennials available.
- Excellent under roses and shrubs, where the ground would otherwise be bare.
What it looks like
Clump-forming or spreading perennials with lobed and divided leaves and flat saucer-shaped five-petalled flowers in blue, purple, pink, magenta or white, followed by the beaked seed capsules that give the cranesbill name.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation — Oxford University Press (2010) · Monograph
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- How to make a garden genuinely useful to beesMost bee-friendly advice covers flowers in June, which is the one thing bees are least short of. The gaps are at the ends of the year — and half the problem is not flowers at all.
- Bee plants for a small gardenA small garden cannot do everything, so it should do the things large gardens usually skip: the winter and early spring gaps, and nesting habitat. Both take almost no space.
- Plants for bumblebeesLong tongues, big bodies, cold tolerance and an annual colony that has to build from a single queen. Bumblebees can use flowers honey bees cannot reach, and they need forage at both ends of the year when honey bees are indoors.
- Long-flowering plants for beesA plant in flower for five months does the work of three plants in flower for six weeks, and removes the timing problem that defeats most bee planting. These are the ones that keep going.
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?