Best UK Wildflowers to Mix with Clover for Bees and Butterflies

A lawn with white clover in it is already doing more for pollinators than a neatly striped green carpet ever will. Bees find it quickly, and those small pink-tinged flower heads keep producing nectar right through the summer. But clover alone gives you a fairly narrow window of interest. Add a few native wildflowers that bloom before it, beside it and after it, and the same patch of grass becomes a season-long larder for bumblebees, solitary bees, hoverflies and butterflies.

The key is choosing plants that want the same conditions clover does: sun for at least part of the day, soil that isn't fed or sprayed, and a mower that doesn't come out too often. Get that balance right and the patch looks after itself, year after year.

Why clover needs company

White clover (Trifolium repens) crops up in lawns because it tolerates close cutting and poor soil. Its flowers open from roughly late spring into early autumn, and because it's a legume it works with soil bacteria to fix nitrogen, which keeps the grass around it healthy without fertiliser. Red clover (T. pratense) is taller and needs grass left long, but it's one of the best plants you can grow for long-tongued bumblebees.

What clover doesn't do is flower early enough for the first queen bumblebees emerging in March, or late enough for butterflies stocking up before winter. Bridging those gaps is where native wildflowers earn their place.

Spring: the first flowers of the year

Early queens are hungry and there is very little about. Anything flowering in March and April is worth its space.

• Dandelion — unfashionable, but one of the most valuable early nectar sources in the country. Leave a sunny patch uncut and let it flower.
• Bugle (Ajuga reptans) — low-growing blue spikes that suit a shady edge and flower before most clover.
• Red dead-nettle — a long-tongued bumblebee favourite, flowering in mild spells almost all year.
• Cowslip and primrose — lovely in a rough verge, and useful to early bees.
• Ground ivy — spreads happily under hedges and flowers early in the season.

Violets are worth adding too, not for nectar but for their leaves: several fritillary butterflies will only lay eggs on them.

Early summer: the clover companions

This is the crossover point, when clover is coming into flower and the meadow plants are waking up. These all grow well in the same low-fertility grass:

• Bird's-foot trefoil — low, cheerful yellow-and-orange flowers that blend beautifully with clover. It's also the caterpillar food plant for common blue butterflies, so it earns its keep twice over.
• Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) — short enough to survive occasional mowing, with purple flower heads that bees work constantly.
• Oxeye daisy — tall, white and generous with nectar and pollen. Best in a strip left long.
• Yarrow — flat flower heads that hoverflies and small beetles use as landing pads.
• Viper's bugloss — a biennial with vivid blue flowers that bees queue up for. Sow it and be patient.

High summer: plants with staying power

By July the clover is at its peak and butterflies are on the wing. Knapweed is the single best addition you can make here — greater knapweed for bees and butterflies, common knapweed for a slightly tougher, shorter plant. Field scabious, with its pale lilac pincushions, is another favourite of meadow browns and gatekeepers. Wild marjoram brings in small tortoiseshells and peacocks, and betony gives a late-summer purple haze that bumblebees seem unable to resist.

If you have room for one more, add meadow cranesbill. Its blue flowers sit well among clover and it carries on for weeks.

Late season: keep the nectar flowing

Autumn is when pollinators are fattening up for winter, or building reserves for hibernation, and flowers are scarce. Devil's-bit scabious is the star here, flowering into September and October. Autumn hawkbit is a low, dandelion-like plant that fits neatly into a shorter lawn and keeps flowering after the mower has been over it. A late flush of red clover helps too.

And if there's ivy on a wall or fence, leave it alone until it has finished flowering. Its green autumn flowers are one of the biggest nectar sources available to bees and butterflies in the UK, right when little else is open.

Don't forget the caterpillars

Nectar gets all the attention, but butterflies only appear if their caterpillars have something to eat. That means tolerating a little roughness. A patch of nettles in a sunny corner supports peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral. Long grass left uncut over winter shelters the caterpillars of meadow browns, ringlets and skippers. Bird's-foot trefoil looks after the common blue. You don't need all of it — one messy corner is enough.

Think of the patch as two zones: a short, tidy edge for clover and selfheal, and a longer strip behind it for knapweed, scabious and grasses. Mow paths through it if you like. The plants don't mind.

Setting up and managing your patch

Start small. A two-metre strip along a fence or the back of a border is plenty for a first year, and it's far easier to look after than half a lawn.

1. Reduce fertility first. Wildflowers lose out to lush grass. Stop feeding, stop using weedkiller, and take the clippings away every time you cut.
2. Sow yellow rattle if grass is dominant. It's semi-parasitic on grasses and thins them out naturally. Sow it in autumn and let it set seed before you cut.
3. Choose native seed. Buy British-native wildflower seed or plug plants, and follow the supplier's sowing rate rather than scattering thickly.
4. Water only to establish. After the first few weeks, let the plants fend for themselves.
5. Mow on a rotation. Cut the short zone every two to three weeks, never below about five centimetres, and leave the long strip until late summer. Then cut it once, remove the cuttings, and let it rest over winter.
6. Watch what appears. Some plants will take, some won't. Note which flowered well and adjust next spring.

Expect a slow start. Most of these plants settle in their second year and hit their stride in the third, especially the perennials. In the meantime, the clover will cover for them — and once the mix is established, you'll have flowers from March to October with very little input beyond a bit of well-timed mowing.

Photo: PatoSan / Pixabay