Letter: Growing the right plants is the best way to halt bee decline
I read your article on the bee crisis with interest since I have been attempting to grow bee-friendly plants in my garden and I also have a bee home on my garden arbour, although it is only one!
It is alarming how few bees are around at the moment. Just the odd bumble bee and one or two scarce honey bees are visiting my garden.
Even the numbers of hover flies and other beneficial insects are reducing. We cannot just blame this on the pesticides and farmers. Front gardens with flower beds are rare in these days where householders will line up their extra cars on brick paviours and stone chippings and sacrifice the floral area. The natural environment around our homes is being taken away.
This is why we must ensure that we plant bee friendly flowers in beds and tubs. I think that the garden centres could do a lot more to educate and supply these plants to the public.
Plant nurseries continue to swamp the shelves with petunias, pelargoniums and bizzie lizzies.
All very convenient and colourful but sterile for the pollinating insects. I have planted hardy annuals like calendula and cornflower. I have grown some dwarf cosmos for my tubs.
Many daisy-like flowers and herbs will attract bees but the garden centres encourage folks to plant popular half hardy annuals which will not find any bees landing on them.
The situation is becoming critical and it will take a change of growing habits to ensure that the bee population is protected.
Alan Goulding, Newport
