A queen bumblebee pulls herself out of the soil in early spring. She's been dormant for months.

Cold, groggy, running on nothing. The first thing she needs is nectar — and fast — to fuel her flight muscles enough to start a new colony.

If the nearest garden is full of non-native ornamentals with inaccessible flowers, she may not make it.

Cities Are Becoming Pollinator Lifelines

This sounds counterintuitive, but research backs it up. Urban gardens produce about 85% of the nectar found in a city. Meanwhile, countryside nectar supplies have declined by one-third in Britain since the 1930s — the result of industrial farming replacing flower-rich meadows with monocultures.

The urban food supply for pollinators is also more diverse and continuous throughout the year than in farmland. In a city, bees, butterflies, and hoverflies flit from one garden to the next, finding food across multiple microhabitats. Each gardener plants differently. Different bloom times. Different flower shapes. Different heights. That variation turns out to be a lifeline.

Spring: When It Matters Most

The first queen bumblebees emerge from winter hibernation in February and March. They need energy immediately — both nectar for flight and pollen for egg-laying and larval growth. Early spring can still be bleak, even in cities.

Plant borders of hellebore, Pulmonaria, and grape hyacinth. Trees and shrubs like willow, cherry, and flowering currant pack a lot of food into a small space and bloom early enough to matter.

Summer: Diversity Over Abundance

By late spring, there's more food available — but also more competition for it. A diverse mix of flowering plants ensures that different insects with different tongue lengths and body sizes can all find something accessible.

Honeysuckle, Campanula, and lavender work well together in summer gardens. Mowing the lawn a little less often helps too — giving clover and dandelion the chance to bloom, both of which are excellent pollinator plants that often get dismissed as weeds.

Autumn and Winter: The Forgotten Seasons

By late summer, fewer species are still flowering. Common autumn plants like Fuchsia and Salvia have their nectar hidden down long tubes — useless to solitary bees and hoverflies with shorter tongues. Swap these out for open, accessible flowers: ivy, Sedum, Echinacea, and oregano all work well and are easy to grow.

In winter, most pollinators die off or enter dormancy. But bumblebees and honeybees remain active in cities, taking advantage of warmer urban microclimates. They need energy-dense nectar to keep flying in near-freezing temperatures. Mahonia, sweet box, winter honeysuckle, and the strawberry tree are among the best winter options.

What Not To Do

Pesticides are an obvious problem — spraying insecticides removes the insects the whole garden is meant to support. But the subtler issue is nectar quantity. Some gardens provide pollinators with hundreds of times less nectar than their neighbors. The gap isn't always visible, but the bees notice.

Keep plants stocked season to season. Leave flower stems standing over winter — they double as nesting sites for stem-nesting bees. And when in doubt, choose plants that have been flowering in your region for centuries. Native plants and their pollinators co-evolved over thousands of years. That relationship is still intact if you give it the space to work.

As urban gardens continue to play a major role in supporting pollinators, every balcony, backyard, and rooftop has the potential to make a real environmental impact. By choosing the right plants for each season, city gardeners can create continuous sources of nectar that sustain bees, butterflies, and other vital pollinators year-round. In the end, even small green spaces can add up to something powerful—turning cities into healthier, more vibrant ecosystems.