Wild privet

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Worked heavily by bees and by day-flying moths, and the scent carries a long way. Privet is also the larval food plant of the privet hawkmoth, Britain's largest resident hawkmoth.

Small tubular flowers in dense panicles — shallow enough for short-tongued bees and rewarding enough to be worked hard.

Worth knowing

A good midsummer nectar source, entirely dependent on the shrub being allowed to flower.

Flowering

In flower

June to July (northern hemisphere)

A midsummer flow of three to four weeks — and only on unclipped plants.

Growing it

Conditions

Sun or shade on almost any soil, and particularly at home on chalk. Extremely tolerant of neglect and pollution.

Size

3-5 m tall if left unclipped.

Native range

Europe, North Africa and southwest Asia, in hedgerow and scrub, particularly on chalk and limestone.

Suits

Hedgerow, Large gardens

Maintenance, and the bit that matters

The single most useful thing anyone can do with a privet hedge is to stop clipping part of it.

• Let it flower. A clipped privet hedge produces no flowers at all and is of no use to anything.
• Clip after flowering rather than before if a formal hedge is wanted — it is a genuine compromise and it works.
• Semi-evergreen, holding leaves through mild winters.

What it looks like

A semi-evergreen shrub with narrow glossy leaves and dense upright panicles of small cream tubular flowers with a strong, some would say overpowering, sweet scent, followed by black berries.