Sign up to grow blooms for bees - Kitchen Garden Magazine

The Blooms for Bees team wants to improve bedding plant recommendations to support pollinators.

The new Blooms for Bees project is looking for citizen scientists to take part in an experiment to assess ‘Mignon’ dahlias, to determine their value for bumblebees and whether the various colours differ in their attractiveness. Many bedding plants have been bred for appearance, often to the detriment of their value to pollinating insects, and the Blooms for Bees team wants to improve bedding plant recommendations to support pollinators.

You will be provided with seed for purple, red and white dahlias, and asked to grow three plants of each colour. You will need to monitor the flowers in each colour group for five minutes, at least once a month, and take a photograph of each visiting bumblebee that you see. You’ll be able to report your observations using the free Blooms for Bees app, available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets from April and featuring an identification guide for all of the UK’s 25 bumblebee species. If you do not have a smartphone or tablet, you can submit your photos online.

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Blooms for Bees is a lottery-funded partnership between Coventry University, Garden Organic, the RHS and Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which aims to promote and improve gardening for bumblebees. To find out more and sign up for the dahlia trial, go to http://www.bloomsforbees.co.uk/

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Steve Ott

Steve Ott is editor of Kitchen Garden magazine and started his career as a professional grower, producing everything from cut flowers to vegetables. He has been growing fruit and veg all his life and spends most of his spare time in his garden in the East Midlands. He loves to experiment with crops and varieties he has never grown before and when he isn’t gardening is to be found out in the countryside bird watching and walking his dog Ted.