I have been ruthless in removing non-native plants from my garden, even those I planted myself in past years. There are some exceptions, though. Some of these non-natives either flower when little else is there to feed pollinators (forget-me-not, Forsythia), while others are so obviously valued by bees and butterflies that they clearly perform an important role in maintaining and feeding insects. Comfrey (Symphytum asperum) is one of these, an attractive (though prickly) plant whose hanging bell-shaped flowers are favoured by bumble bees (who use “buzzing” to get at its pollen). A bunch of comfrey flowers are in the picture at top left, below. Another non-native I foster is fennel, which I don’t cook with but plant because it seems to be the favourite food plant for swallowtail butterfly caterpillars (they also like Queen Ann’s Lace, but they ignore that if there’s fennel around). Thyme and other minty herbs (oregano, basil, mint) have small flowers that small bees and flies like.

But my favourite, and the biggest draw for bees in my garden, is sage. It flowers in late May and over continues to do so for weeks. Bees of all sizes come for the nectar, and looking down at my big sage plants yesterday I could see the busy traffic of dozens of bees. These include honey bees (Apis mellifera), like the one seen taking off after feeding at a sage flower, top right; Osmia sp., second down from top left; Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens), second down from top right, using its front leg to hold up a leaf; Bicoloured Agapostemon (Agapostemon viriscens), third down on the left, seen here approaching a sage flower on the wing; the Polyester Bee (Colletes inaequalis), third down from the right; and several others too small for me to recognize. There are also ants feeding on sage nectar and several species of fly, as well as Cabbage White butterflies (Pieris rapae), bottom left. The surfeit of insects also attracts parasitic wasps, one of which I captured in a fuzzy image (bottom right).

Apart from sage, this week’s major draw for bees was my honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos), which I planted in 2009 as a seedling and which is now taller than the house. It’s the first year that it’s produced a lot of flowers, and the bees are all over it. They also love the Red-Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea), which is going through a second round of flowering. As the honey locust stops flowering, the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is about to flower; I never imagined that these interesting-looking inflorescences (a bit like Romanesco brocoli) could be appealing to insects, just because they’re green and not showy–but I was wrong. Bees love them: