Winter flowers

What’s flowering in your garden at the moment? Even though flowering plants are more abundant in spring and summer the bees and insects still need a food source over winter so it’s important to consider your winter garden blooms - and lately it has been so dreary and rainy and cold (and mostly a very untypical Brisbane winter!) who wouldn’t want a bit of colour!

Here are some of the plants that are in flower in my garden at the moment.

In the daisy (Asteraceae) family is one of my favourites, passionfruit marigold (Tagetes lemmonii), along with common French marigolds (Tagetes patula), cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa). Yep! let your lettuces go to seed and they will reward you with the most dainty yellow flowers on long tall stalks. All of these self seed readily and pop up when the time is right, though the passionfruit marigold plants are perennial (will last a few years). Pollinators love daisy flowers and the more open the flower the better as it is easier for them to get to the pollen. The passionfruit marigold is always covered in bees because it’s flowers are simple and open - unlike the French marigolds that have ruffled petals and cover up the pollen and I tend not to see as many insects on them.

For more permanent plants - you can’t go past camellias, which have their main flush of flowers in early winter and continue to spot flower throughout the rest of the season (again pick the varieties that are more open if you’re planting with bees in mind). Repeat flowering roses can also have flushes of flowers in our milder winters - mine flower repeatedly all year until I give them a good prune late winter.

Another beautifully fragrant shrub is yellow throat Rondeletia amoena. It has little pale pale pink trumpet shaped flowers with (surprisingly..) a yellow centre. Both this and the equally fragrant buddleja are excellent nectar sources for butterflies. Buddleja comes in a range of colours and has similar tubular shaped flowers with a super sweet honey scent. I’ve just bought a beautiful magenta coloured one to replace one I lost and although it’s still in it’s pot waiting to be planted it’s flowering away happily.

And finally, one of the best all round flowering plants for pollinators - perennial basil! I find it needs a hedge every so often to keep it from flopping over whenever it rains, but it flowers profusely all the time and is constantly covered in bees.

While my garden isn’t bursting with flowers now like it does in spring there is still heaps to tempt pollinators and get them through the winter lull.

Aroids

Rosella Jam