Hyssop

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Worked constantly by honey bees and bumblebees. Its long association with monastic beekeeping is not accidental — it was planted beside hives precisely because it produces so freely for its size.

Short two-lipped flowers with accessible nectar and protruding stamens, usable by short-tongued bees.

Worth knowing

Very high nectar per square metre from a small drought-proof plant, delivered across the late-summer gap.

Flowering

In flower

June to September (northern hemisphere)

A long window through high summer, extendable by cutting back after the first flush.

When nectar flows

Exceptionally productive for the size of the plant, and it keeps secreting through hot dry spells.

Year-to-year variation

Very dependable. A honey crop only where it is grown at field scale, which is rare.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, poor sharply drained alkaline soil. It dies of winter wet, not of cold.

Size

40-60 cm.

Native range

Southern Europe and the Middle East.

Suits

Containers and window boxes, Small gardens, Large gardens, Hedgerow

• Cut back by a third after the first flush for a second flowering into September.
• Trim lightly in spring to keep it dense; it becomes leggy and woody if left entirely alone.
• Excellent as a low informal edging in a dry border, and a genuinely serious bee plant for the space it takes.

What it looks like

A neat semi-evergreen subshrub with narrow aromatic leaves and slender one-sided spikes of small deep violet-blue two-lipped flowers with protruding stamens.