Let’s talk a little bit about roses, shall we?
I know I’ve been promising rose lists, and when I was writing about the RHS Hampton Court wildlife garden earlier this week, it struck me that I should delve further and more deeply into the varieties of this most wonderful plant that were selected to be used in this garden.
The rose, we know, is a beautiful thing. But it isn’t always necessarily the first flower to spring to mind when it comes to selecting plants for a garden designed to attract wildlife, to provide shelter, food and water in order to create a haven, to increase biodiversity and, basically, to do our bit. We know about flower shapes, about tubular flowers that bees can find their way into: you’ve got the tubular flowers - either large, such as foxgloves, or groups of smaller flowers with a tubular shape, such as Verbena bonariensis and buddleia which butterflies adore. Flowers such as salvia have a kind of a lip that bumblebees use as a kind of a foothold as they land and then reach into the flower.
The hoverflies loved the Daucus carota with its umbels of flowers which offer up nectar without any effort on the part of hoverflies and beetles. Daisy-shaped flowers, eg Anthemis EC Buxton, have a big cushion of pollen which solitary bees love.
Shallow, open flowers such as poppies have a huge amount of pollen all ready and waiting in the centre of the plant - look at these stills of a bee dislodging the pollen by buzzing:
And this is where the roses come in.
Roses are invaluable plants for attracting wildlife into the garden, with open-flowered varieties producing nectar-rich flowers. These single flowers are easily accessible to insects and many will also go on to produce hips in the autumn, a nutritious meal for several species of bird as food sources start to become scarce.1
David Austin Roses sum it up:
Bees and insects are incredibly valuable to have in the garden. Beneficial insects will help to keep your roses healthy by eating pests such as aphids. Bees will help other plants reproduce by sharing pollen. Sadly, there has been a sharp decline in bee numbers over the past few years. Creating an environment where bees, including honeybees and bumblebees, can thrive is something to bear in mind when choosing plants for your garden. Bees are particularly attracted to the roses pictured here because most have single or semi-double flowers giving them easy access to their pollen-rich stamens.
Rosa ‘Ballerina’ is one such rose. Its open flowers, which all cluster together in an effect which brings to mind a kind of rosy hydrangea, is a great rose for the pollinators as they whizz from one flower to the next in an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet of pollen:
Next to Rosa ‘Ballerina’ above, you can see Rosa 'Rhapsody in Blue', its other-worldly blue-ish petals holding at their heart a central boss of golden, pollen-heaped stamens which offer yet more dining opportunities. Vigorous rugosas are planted in this area too, with R. rugosa ‘Rubra’ and ‘Alba’ looking shaggily wild and their withering flowers left undeadheaded in order to form those all-important hips over time.