Drought impacting pollinators

How have your gardens coped with the driest summer since 1976? We only had 17mm of rain from July to the end of August, and we live in Wales! The arid weather not only puts the plants under stress but, to preserve moisture, most plants stop producing nectar, so pollinators' food supply plummets.

I have always had a minimalist approach to watering flowerbeds, and this year I only watered the research bed twice, each time when several plants began to droop. This allowed me to assess which plants tolerated the drought conditions and, more importantly, which seemed to continue to produce nectar.

The plants that did best i.e. kept attracting bees, were mostly herbs: calamint, catmint, oregano, and hyssop. However, a few plants surprised me, including Malva alcea (bigger than M.moschata, smaller than a hollyhock), which kept flowering happily even though I only planted it this year. We are out of stock now but will have more next year.

We will all need more drought-resistant plants, so at Rosybee, we are starting to test more plants that can cope with drought. At the end of August, we visited several botanic gardens to research which plants were flowering well and still attracting bees. We came away with some interesting insights, and you will see some new plants in our range next year.