Attracting bees to your garden

This short course will introduce you to the fascinating world of bees and flowers, and help you develop planting schemes to attract more bees to your own garden. It will begin with a talk by the Director of the Botanic Garden, Professor Beverley Glover, on the relationship between bees and flowers; Beverley has been studying the interaction between pollinating insects and the surface structures of flowers for over a decade. This will be followed by a walk and talk amongst the plants in the Bee Borders with one of our expert horticulturists, Paul Aston, who is responsible for the design and maintenance of these beautiful beds.

Director of the Botanic Garden, Professor Glover came to Cambridge in 1996 following a PhD at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Her main area of interest is the evolution and development of floral features which attract pollinating animals. She is keen to approach questions of floral evolution in an integrative way, combining molecular genetic approaches to understand floral development with functional analyses using bumblebees and other pollinators. Where possible, these projects are carried out with regard to the phylogenetic context. The research group’s work on these topics is underpinned by the living collection at the Botanic Garden.

Paul Aston is Team Leader on the Display Areas of the Botanic Garden. Over the last fifteen years he has worked on the re-design and plantings of the Mediterranean beds.