Photograph by David Blaikie

A garden without birds, bees or butterflies is not really a garden — it tells you there are no flowers to attract them to their sweet nectar, and a garden without flowers would certainly be a dull place.

Thyme honey from Mount Hymettus in Greece has been famous for thousands of years and there are other honeys distinctively flavoured by certain flowers — for example, rosemary honey from the south of France and Spain, leatherwood honey from Tasmania and clover honey from Canada.

Most honey, however, is an amalgam of flavours from a mixture of sources, and the flowers of aromatic herbs in particular.

A third group, although producing less nectar, are hardy and reliable, and they include borage (which produce masses of grey-white pollen when it is particularly needed by bees), lavender, lemon balm, oreganum, rosemary and all the basils.

You don’t need your own hives to attract bees to your garden for their valuable job of pollinating your vegetables and fruit, they will travel several kilometres to a good source of nectar — and on a daily basis, except during bad weather. A garden designed specifically to attract bees and butterflies should be planted in full sun as this helps stimulate the production of nectar by the herbs.

Historically, hives were rubbed with lemon balm to attract swarms and the scented oil can be added to the syrup used for introducing queen bees to the hive. Stored with honey, wormwood stems and foliage discourages wax moth, and stroking a swarm of bees with bruised branches will encourage the bees to move on.