Pollinator and Bee Mix
Worth sowing on bare ground if the species list is native, but mowing your lawn less often helps Irish bees more.
Pollinator mixes are the biggest sellers in the wildflower aisle and the easiest to get wrong, because a packet can be labelled bee friendly while containing nothing an Irish solitary bee has ever met. The honest position, and it is a stronger one than most seed sellers will tell you, is that the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan does not recommend sowing wildflower mixes at all and endorses no seed product or supplier. Where you do have bare ground to fill, a native perennial mix is worth far more to pollinators than a bright annual blend.
Quick facts
- Botanical name
- Mixed species
- Type
- Open pollinated
- Category
- Pollinator mix
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Hardiness
- Hardy, takes Irish frost
- In Ireland
- Grows outdoors unprotected
- Germination
- 14 to 30 days at 8 to 18C
- Sowing rate
- 1.5g per square metre
- Height
- 80cm
- Position
- Full sun
- Containers
- Needs open ground
- In flower
- May to September
Sowing and harvest calendar for Pollinator and Bee Mix
Months shaded below are the reliable windows for Irish conditions.
Where to buy Pollinator and Bee Mix wildflower seeds in Ireland
Irish suppliers that stock this, so postage stays domestic and seed arrives in time to sow. These are plain links, not paid placements.
Order online
- Quickcrop Irish Every mix branded native Irish grown, including shade and flowering lawn options Ballymote based, lists sowing and harvest months per product and ships across Ireland. Visit Quickcrop , Co. Sligo
- Seedaholic Irish States its wildflower seed is produced within the British Isles Family run in Clonbur since 2005, deep heirloom range with detailed growing notes on every packet. Visit Seedaholic , Co. Galway
Why it suits Ireland
Roughly a third of Ireland’s wild bee species are threatened with extinction, which is the finding the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan was built on. Most of those are solitary bees rather than the bumblebees people picture, and they are fussier: many are tied to particular plant families and to a narrow flight period, so a mix that flowers from May to September in one solid block of colour can still miss them entirely.
A native perennial mix works here because it flowers in the sequence Irish insects are timed to. It also survives our winters as roots rather than seed, so it turns up again in year two without you doing anything, which an annual blend will not.
The other reason to prefer perennials in Ireland is the weather. Annual pollinator mixes need a warm dry spring to establish quickly, and we often do not get one. Perennials sown in autumn are already rooted before the following spring.
Growing notes
Sow onto cleared ground in March or April, or better, in late August or September so the perennials get a winter behind them. Rate is around 1 to 1.5 grams per square metre, bulked with dry sand.
Poor soil again. This mix contains legumes, and clovers and vetches fix their own nitrogen, so feeding it does nothing for them and a great deal for the grass that will otherwise take over.
Do not deadhead and do not tidy. Seed heads left standing feed finches through the autumn, and hollow dead stems are where some solitary bees overwinter. Cut once in September and leave a strip uncut over winter if you can spare it.
If the patch is next to a lawn, the cheapest improvement you can make is to stop mowing that lawn between April and September, or to mow it every six weeks instead of every week. In most Irish gardens that single change puts more flowers in front of bees than the packet will.
Common questions
Does sowing a bee mix actually help Irish pollinators?
It helps if it goes onto bare ground and the species are native, and it helps very little otherwise. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan's own first recommendations are to mow less, leave hedgerows and bramble alone, and let the clover, selfheal, dandelion and bird's-foot trefoil that are already in most Irish lawns come into flower. Those cost nothing and produce more forage than a small sown patch. Seed is the right answer for a genuinely bare area, a new border edge or a stripped verge, not as a replacement for cutting less.
What should I look for on the packet?
A full species list, and native perennials on it. Red clover, bird's-foot trefoil, common knapweed, selfheal, devil's-bit scabious, oxeye daisy and tufted vetch all feed Irish bees well and come back each year. Phacelia, borage, cosmos, Californian poppy and various annual clovers are what fills a lot of cheap mixes: they do produce nectar, but they are not native, they last one season, and they do least for the solitary bees that make up most of Ireland's bee species.
When is the hungry gap for Irish bees?
Early spring and late summer. Queen bumblebees emerge in February and March, well before most sown annuals are anywhere, which is why willow, dandelion and flowering currant matter so much. The second gap comes in late August and September once the main flush is over. Devil's-bit scabious and common knapweed are the useful natives at that end of the season, so check they are in any mix you buy.
More wildflowers to consider
Native Irish Meadow Mix
Open pollinated / Perennial native meadow mix
The mix to choose if you want a permanent meadow that belongs here, and you can wait three years for it.
Growing notes and stockistsCornfield Annuals Mix
Open pollinated / Annual cornfield mix
The only wildflower mix that delivers in its first summer, but it needs the soil disturbed again every single year.
Growing notes and stockistsShade and Woodland Edge Mix
Open pollinated / Shade and woodland edge mix
For damp shade under a hedge or deciduous trees, where a meadow mix would simply rot away.
Growing notes and stockists