Gardening for Bees and Other Pollinators

Gardening for bees

We all know how important it is to attract bees and other pollinators into our gardens. We all know that they feed on plants and on certain plants more than others. In our 40 years of growing we have developed a list of over 80 plants that really do it for these critters.

Since we started out we’ve had a special area of our nursery devoted to plants beloved of bees and other pollinators, such as nepetas, sedums, agastache, salvias, monardas…. you can check out the full list in our ‘plants for pollinators’ list on our website. All of the plants listed are available in our nursery, grown naturally and orginacally by us. Ready to attract pollinators into your garden as soon as they are planted out.

This has always been an important concept for us since we started the nursery. 20 years ago people were surprised (and a fair few delighted) to see our dedicated bees and butterflies section. Now its one of the first things that many visitors to our nursery ask to see. This section, devopled intentionally over the past few decades takes up approx. 1/5 of our nursery.

As with all of our stock these plants are grown by us on the nursery, using organic materials and natural growing methods.

We don’t force our plants- we allow them to grow naturally, at their natural speed (and natural slowness), outdoors, exposed to all of our Irish weather. This treatment ensures that only the strong survive!

Our plants are hardy and at the point of sale are ready to be planted out in your garden and flourish.

This method of growing, slow, organic and natural with exposure to the elements is the most natural way of plant growth and is a very concious choice on our part. it means that you, the customer, gets the best quality plant. by not forcing our plants or growing them under cover or giving them chemical plant food to make them grow faster we produce (at a slower pace and in smaller ammounts) high quality, well rooted stock. By the time they are ready for you buy in our nursery or online they are ready to GO!

When aiming for biodiversity (and colour) its important to choose plants that flower at different times. This means you have flowers in your garden all season long and that there is a continous source of food for pollinators.

We love seeing the bees and butterflies feeding on our plants when they flower on the nursery. We are even happy to see the caterpillars (we carefully move them away from our stock). And of course we are very careful not to disturb any chrysalis that we are lucky enough to come across.

You can buy our plants in our nursery in East Clare, we are open everyday from 10am to 5pm, including Sundays and Bank Holidays. Or if you can’t make the trip you can buy from our website and your plants will be delivered.

We have lots of parking onsite and visitors enjoy walking around and seeing our unusual layout and hundreds and hundreds of varieties of plants.

Hopefully we will see you at the nursery soon!