How to grow bee-friendly wildflowers

Bees are essential to our natural world, pollinating plants and food crops on which we and other species depend. But their numbers are in serious decline due to threats such as pesticides, intensive farming and climate change.

It’s also alarming just how little protection nature gets and how few people have access to its benefits. In the UK, each person has access to just 32 m² of public green space on average – that’s less than an eighth of a tennis court. 

We need to increase and restore the amount of good-quality green space across the UK. By sowing bee-friendly wildflowers in your garden, street or community space, you can build a habitat for our bees and other wild species, protecting pollinators and helping nature thrive.

Our Bee Saver Kits include wildflower seeds, a garden planner and a bee spotter guide. Order a kit today. 

How to plant wildflower seeds

Instructions

1. Find a bright, sunny spot to sow wildflower seeds in your garden, in a window box or on your balcony. Friends of the Earth's wildflower mix covers a space roughly 1 m².

2. Scatter your seeds between March and April or August and October. Loosely cover with soil (not garden compost), water and keep moist. 

Top tip: prod the soil to a depth of 2-5 cm. If it’s dry, it needs watering.

3. Sit back and watch the bees enjoy your beautiful flowers in bloom. 

When will they flower?

They'll flower between April and September. Our wildflower mix has a height range of 20-90 cm.

What’s inside our wildflower mix?

Brighten your home or garden with our mix of:

• wildflowers (yarrow, knapweed, wild carrot, lady’s bedstraw, rough hawkbit, ox-eye daisy, ribwort plantain, cowslip, selfheal, meadow buttercup, yellow rattle, sorrel, salad burnet, white campion, red campion, wild red clover, field poppy and cornflower) and
• meadow grasses (common bent, crested dog's-tail, hard fescue, slender creeping red fescue, strong creeping red fescue, smooth stalked meadow grass and musk mallow).

Please note the composition of seeds may vary. Happy planting!

Ordering a kit from Northern Ireland?

We’ve carefully collected a mixture of seeds that are suitable for planting in Northern Ireland:

• yarrow (Achillea millefolium), black knapweed (Centaurea nigra), wild carrot (Daucus carota), lady's bedstraw (Galium verum), autumn hawkbit (Scorzoneroides autumnalis), ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata), devil’s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis), selfheal (Prunella vulgaris), sorrel (Rumex acetosa), viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), red campion (Silene dioica), ragged robin (Silene flos cuculi) and teasel (Dipsacus fullonum).