10 Plants for a Bee-Friendly Garden

Bees do a lot for our environment, so why not return the favor? Planting a bee-friendly garden is a great way to support bee life in your neighborhood.

Are you cultivating a new garden from scratch? Are you looking for ways to increase the beauty and bounty of your existing garden? Bringing in bee-friendly plants is a smart and sustainable plan. With so many varietals to choose from, it’s pretty easy to plant a garden that’s both stunning and bee-friendly.

Get inspired with these ten plants that are a perfect fit for a bee-friendly garden.

Why are bees beneficial?

Around the globe, bees are a dominant force in pollination—helping plants, including both wild varietals and domestic crops, grow to their full potential. This is immensely important to the health of the world’s plant life since 75% of all crop species produce greater yields when they’re pollinated.

Of the 20,000 different types of bees, only 12 are directly managed by people for crop pollination. Nine of those types of bees are commonly found in North American gardens—including honeybees, bumblebees, squash bees, long-horned bees, and carpenter bees.

Some bees provide a very specific service. For example, squash bees only collect pollen from (you guessed it) squash and other plants in the gourd family, making them essential to the fall pumpkin patch. Others have diverse tastes and will show up wherever they see something they like.

The types of bees that will proliferate in your bee-friendly garden will depend on where you live and the variety of plants that you’re growing. Whoever appears though will be happy to provide you with their valuable pollination services, in turn helping your garden prosper. That’s great news if you’re planting edible crops like fruits and veggies since it means a bigger bounty every season. And if you plant flowers, it means bigger, healthier blooms.

In either case, a bee-friendly garden is a happy garden. It’s also one that provides a reciprocal service, offering bees an abundance of food and shelter, both of which can be hard for them to find in neighborhoods that are blanketed in sprawling green lawns.

Simply put: do your part for the bees and they’ll do their part for you. It’s as easy as putting in the right plants, and that’s where the list below will come in handy.

10 plants to put in your bee-friendly garden

Bees aren’t picky eaters. There are a ton of different varietals of plants that will attract bees to your garden, so whatever your region, climate, soil type, or garden style, you should be able to find some that you like and that will thrive in your yard. These ten bee-friendly plants are good ones to consider as you get started.