A scientist has revealed one piece of advice for gardeners who want their flowers to thrive this summer. Speaking to the Daily Express at the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Ludi Wang, a Research Associate at the Sainsbury Laboratory at Cambridge University, explained how important it is to attract pollinators to your garden and one thing you can do to make sure they want to come to your outdoor space and help your flowers grow.
Pollinators such as bees and butterflies are vital for the growth of flowers and crops. What we grow wouldn’t survive without them. So, we want to create an environment in our gardens that is attractive for bees and other pollinators, giving us the best chance of our gardens thriving this summer. While clean-cut, manicured gardens are a favourable style for many, Wang says that we should be making our gardens as natural as possible in order to attarct pollinators and to do that, planting a variety of flowers is vital.
“I think the diversity of plants is very important,” she explained. “Have more variety in your garden.”
She added: “That way, you are creating an environment for pollinators and giving them more of a chance to survive. Naturally, different varieties will grow together, and it’s about creating a more natural environment instead of a more limited number of species.
“Every year we have different climates, so even if some of the species don’t cope well with that environment, we also have other choices for the pollinators.”
Wang’s work involves her examining the petals and genes of flowers in order to create flowers that attract pollinators, improving agriculture in the face of climate change. But for home gardeners, her advice is to simply have as much variety in your garden as possible.
There are many ways you can attract pollinators to your garden. One of them is to make sure that you have nectar-rich plants in your garden. These include lavender, purpletop vervain, salvia, cosmos, borage and milkweed.
Bees are also attracted to certain colours, so make sure that in your garden there are some blues, purples, oranges and yellows. Butterflies, another important pollinator, are attracted to pink, red, white and purple flowers.