Why bronze fennel is the all-rounder you need in your garden
Here’s a wildlife wonder that doesn’t compromise on style. Add this designer perennial to your borders or container displays for drama and pollinator provision
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What makes fennel great for wildlife?
Bronze fennel is a brilliant plant for supporting hoverflies, much-overlooked pollinators and key players in the garden ecosystem.
Fennel has flat-topped flowerheads called umbels, each one containing dozens of tiny nectar-producing flowers. These tiny, open flowers, grouped into accessible landing platforms, are perfect for hoverflies – who have short mouthparts – to land and feed on. The bright yellow colour of the flowers helps hoverflies locate them.
Blooming from mid to late summer, fennel flowers when hoverfly numbers peak, coinciding perfectly to support their breeding cycle and energy needs.
In June 2026, new official data highlighted that hoverflies are in dramatic decline in the UK and need our help. A third of our hoverflies have been lost in just eight years.
Why are hoverflies so important?
Though they only live for an average of around 12 days depending on species – and there are over 280 in the UK – hoverflies have an impressive work ethic, travelling greater distances and making more frequent flower visits than bees.
As well as being prolific pollinators, hoverflies include some species whose larve feed on aphids in our gardens, and others who break down waste organic material. Providing pollination, recycling services and natural management of aphids on our roses and broad beans, hoverflies are a true gardener’s friend.
In turn, we need to support them by including some of their favourite plants in our outdoor space.
Where and how to grow bronze fennel
Easy to grow, hardy and drought tolerant, fennel needs virtually no maintenance once established. It thrives in free-draining soil and full sun, forming a clump of stems up to two metres tall, which die back in autumn and resprout from the base each spring.
Fennel self-seeds very readily, so once you have it, you’ll never be short of this beautiful plant, but you may need to edit out any unwanted plants or move young
As well as being edible and aromatic, this stalwart perennial looks great in many settings, from formal herb gardens to flower borders and gravel gardens, and it mingles particularly well with ornamental grasses. The flowers also make beautiful additions to floral arrangements.
Other top wildlife plants for July
- Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium) – perfect for incoporating into an area of long grass or meadow. If you’re lucky, these may arrive naturally, but you can give them a boost by planting ox-eye daisy or yarrow
plug plants - Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) – use this easy annual to add colour to beds and borders, particularly with poor soil, or add to wildlife or long grass areas. You can grow it in containers, too.
- Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis) – perfect for growing in pots or planting around veg to act as a companion plant.
