Bees + Urban Environments
How Can a Bee Garden Help Your Plants Thrive?
How to Contribute to Your Local Ecosystem and Help Save the Bees
- Step 1: Grab a Save the Bees Variety Pack
- Step 2: Start your seed pods in your nursery.
- Step 3: When they're ready to head to your Rise Garden, add them to a 8 or 12-pod tray so they don't take up too much space in your Rise Garden.
- Step 4: Let them grow for 2-4 weeks.
- Step 5: Follow this tutorial for how to transplant your plants.
- Step 6: Bring your plants outside + let them do what they're meant to do: thrive!
Frequently Asked Questions
What plants can you grow indoors to attract bees?
To support bee populations, grow flowering herbs like lavender, borage, thyme, and lemon balm, as well as edible flowers like nasturtiums and calendula that are highly attractive to pollinators. While indoor plants cannot directly provide foraging habitat for outdoor bees, moving flowering plants outside during warm months or growing a bee-friendly outdoor container garden alongside your indoor Rise Garden creates a meaningful pollinator habitat. Even the act of growing bee-friendly plants at home raises awareness and contributes to the broader movement to support pollinator health.
Why are bees important for home gardeners?
Bees are critical pollinators for the majority of flowering food crops, including fruits, vegetables, and many herbs, meaning that a decline in bee populations has direct implications for our food supply. For outdoor gardeners, planting bee-friendly plants near fruiting crops significantly increases yield by improving pollination rates. Rise Gardens encourages its community to think about the broader food ecosystem and consider planting pollinator-supportive plants alongside their indoor growing setup.
Can you grow borage hydroponically?
Borage, with its striking blue star-shaped flowers that are both edible and highly attractive to bees, can be grown in a larger hydroponic setup with adequate support for its stems. It prefers slightly alkaline conditions with a pH of 6.0 to 7.0 and benefits from high light levels to produce its signature flowers. Both the flowers and young leaves are edible, with a mild cucumber flavor that works beautifully in salads, cocktails, and as a garnish.
What can I do at home to help support bee populations?
Supporting bees starts with the plants you choose to grow — prioritizing flowering herbs and edible flowers over ornamental plants with no nectar value is one of the most effective actions a home gardener can take. Avoiding pesticides, even organic ones, in areas where bees are active protects foraging pollinators from harm. Creating a small, intentional pollinator garden on a balcony or patio and combining it with an indoor Rise Garden gives you fresh food while actively contributing to ecological health.
