Climbing flowers

Hello everyone

I was wondering if anyone can recommend me a climbing flower for my new fence I have attached a picture, a flower that doesnt atract bees though! I was thinking about a Clemantis Mixes, or Clemantis "Nelly moser" or Clemantis "piilu"

thanks!

M.

 

What's up with bees? I know its a matter of preference but I see bumblebees as a vital part of a good garden. I love watching bumblebees go about their daily chores. I once had half a dozen or so of them graft away about 3 inches in front of my face as I was down on my hands and knees pulling weeds out from below my sage bush. Then a big spider turned up and I legged it.

 

It is more about my son he is only two and I dont want him wanting to play with the bees!
I went to the children centre in the summer and there was a bunch of flowers which attracted loads of bees and it just scared for him

 

Hello Miriam
Some clematis will be fine for a fence like yours . They will need something to attach themsleves to though , your reed screening may not give enough help to them. Nelly Moser is one I have , a good choice , but can suffer if south facing. Try the site below for a bit of advice , the Piilu loks very nice as well Dont worry about the bees , your son will get stung a few times as he grows up - and not only from bees ! Its part of growing up :D

http://www.clematis.com.pl/wms/wmsg.php/

 

All flowers will attract bees, Miriam.
They are harmless and lovely if you leave them alone.
They are not interested in you - only in going about the work they do.
Your son will not be afraid of the bees unless you teach him to be so.
Just show him the bees and say - oh look, lovely busy bee, helping all the flowers.

Clematis would be a good choice for your fence - nice fence - but my clematis attracts hover flies in droves. They are harmless too, can't even sting.

 

Here's some misconceptions about bumblebees that I've figured out over the years:

They will sting you if you disturb them, not usually true. Bumblebees instictively know that it uses up a tremendous amount of their energy reserve to deploy their sting. They will only use it as a last resort, or in blind panic. I accidentally stood right on top of a bumblebee nest while working on my land one time, using a chainsaw to thin out the blackthorn. The first I knew about it was when I realised I had about 100 bees orbiting me. I looked down and saw a load of cute bee faces standing guard at the entrance to a little hole in the ground, right next to my foot. Of all those angry bees, not a single one made any attempt to sting me. Realising I was upsetting them I switched the chainsaw off and calmly walked away. This was good enough for the bees, which calmed down as soon as I got to about 10ft away. That's just one example of many close encounters that have led to nothing.

Bee stings hurt. Well I wouldn't know about that. In best part of 40 years on this planet, and inumerable close interactions with bumblebees, I've never ever been stung by one. In fact I only personally know one person that has, and that was because he leaned back in his seat, not knowing that a bee had inadvertantly came in. The bee panic and stung him. He described the pain as similar to a nettle sting.

Bumblebees sometimes chase people and buz around them menacingly. The thing to remember here is that bumblebees have very poor vision and navigate mostly by smell. They can only see anything that we would call detail once they are just inches away, but smell is still the primary sense. As a consequence, if one comes near you and you panic and flap, waiving an invisible cloud of adrenaline into the air, the bumblebee panics picking up on the adrenaline (which usually means danger), but engulfed in this invisible cloud it has no idea which way to go, so it buzzes about frantically making you think it's harrassing you, when in fact it is the bee that thinks its in danger and it just wants to get out of the way, it just doesn't know which way is 'out of the way'.

I should also mention that I actively encourage my little son to check out the bees, and he is really fascinated by them. I don't let him catch them, which he sometimes tries to do (or at least did last year, we haven't seen any yet this year), but I do let him hunt for them in among the flowers. I try to encourage him to not fear things that shouldn't be feared. That said, I find it extremely difficult with spiders, which are a different story. He is fascinated by them, which I think is good, but I have an irrational fear of spiders so it takes all my mental strength to not show fear when my son finds a big juicy spider which he wants to show me.