Bob Flowerdew
Bob is an organic gardener and has designed his garden to produce lots of veg, fruit and cut flowers.
Humaira Ikra
Humaira has worked as a garden designer for over 10 years and runs a garden design course.
Matt Biggs
Matt trained at Kew and has been gardening professionally for more than 30 years.
Q What can we plant for wildlife by a sunny arbour?
Dan, Greater Manchester
A HUMAIRA SAYS Honeysuckle is great, but it can get a bit unruly. As you want something that’s good for wildlife with scent, roses come to mind.
There are a few you could go for such as ‘Direktör Benschop’, which flowers in June and July and repeats in September and October, if happy. It’s heavily scented, has a lovely Chantilly-cream colour and can grow to over four metres in height, so it might cover your arbour and your whole fence, too!
Q&A TEAM ANSWER Arbours for wildlife
Or you could go with the reddest of reds, ‘Étoile de Hollande’. This climber has heavily scented, velvet-crimson double blooms that can flower continuously from June to September. It has an RHS Award of Garden Merit, which tells you that it is a good doer. Both of these roses produce hips, which are both ornamental and a good food source for birds later on in the year.
A For fragrant, star-like white flowers try ; the dense ‘Sweet Sue’ has creamy-white flowers, yellowing with age and a wonderful, sweet fragrance from early summer. Double, blue-purple Kokonoe flowers on new growth so will need to be pruned hard in spring to not outgrow the arbour.
