Ideas for bee-friendly borders

Hi,

I am having some landscaping done which will create a border around 5m in length and 0.75 wide, as well as another corner border around 3 square metres. I am currently toying with ideas for planting next spring and wondered if people had any combinations that work well together? I am definitely having a range of alliums running through the 5m long border, along with lavendar to edge it. I want echinops in my corner border but have no other ideas currently. Any suggestions would be appreciated, particularly ideas for small evergreen shrubs so it's not completely barren in the winter months.

Phil.

 

Which way does the border face?

 

I'd put some Buddleja in there personally. I have both davidii and globosa and I find that globosa is more attractive to the bees.

Get yourself some shrubs like sarcococca confusa if you have a bit of shade and some berberis or ceanothus.

Here's a website I found extremely helpful for my research. It's from a charity to do with the conservation of bumble bees but I've found that honey bees will go to most of them too.

http://beekind.bumblebeeconservation.org/

 

I'd definately recommend Sarcocca confusa a lovely fairly compact evergreen with the added bonus of sweetly scented flowers in late winter...also there are lots of evergreen Euonymus to choose from too

 

How about sedum, I've got 3 patches of it and the bees love it! It's a nice late-flowering plant as well