Lacy Phacelia

If you have been looking for a flower that offers a trifecta of usefulness, look no further than Lacy Phacelia. Also known as Bee's Friend and Lacy Tansy, you can protect and renew your garden bed soils while providing a needed nectar source for pollinators, a beautiful living landscape for your yard, and cut flowers for your home. Cover crops, while immensely useful in maintaining soil health, don't necessarily conjure up visions of ethereal elegance. But Phacelia, a well known cover crop in Europe (though originally a Southwest native), is finding its way into American gardens for its delicate beauty and irresistible sweet bee nectar. It produces nectar 24 hours a day, and pollinators prefer it over other crops. It provides a great amount of bio-mass and winter kills, making it easy to deal with in the spring. And if that isn't enough, the blooms are quick, elegant, unfurling spirals of lavender loveliness. Plus their long sturdy stems and ferny foliage make them a great cut flower.