As well as growing lots of fruit and vegetables in our garden we try and provide plenty of forage for bees and other pollinators. Last year we collected quite a lot of seeds from our garden and we’ve just started to take stock of what we have ready for sowing.

One of the the bees favourite flowers that we had last year were marigolds. They are also one of my favourites too – they are such bright, happy colours and they keep on flowering for ages as long as you keep up with the dead heading. I’m planning to sow lots of them!

Bees can only make use of the simple single or pot marigolds – they cannot reach the nectar of  the more fancy double kind, so keep that in mind when buying seeds.

Last autumn my children loved collecting the seeds heads from the Love-in-the-mist plants and sprinkling them all over the place like pepper pots. This week they were excited to see that some feathery little plants are already growing – our front garden should have an interesting mix of lavender and love-in-the mist later this year!