The Humble Hebe

Serving up sweet, sweet nectar to the gods (uh, I mean insects)

When I think of nectar-rich flowers for insects, or a pollinator garden, I tend to think of a typical wildflowers full of colour: lavender, poppies, alliums, maybe some single dahlias (they can’t get into the multi-layered, fluffy ones). In New Zealand we often don’t think of natives when it comes to flowers, do we?

Red admiral (Vanessa gonerilla) on introduced yarrow flower in my butterfly garden - endemic

But as I was pondering what to plant in my butterfly garden for the summer ahead, I remembered the humble hebe. We have a wonderfully diverse array of hebe (Veronicia, sub-genus Pseudoveronica, sect. Hebe) the name for the genus in te reo Māori is koromiko). There are almost 100 naturally occurring species and - humans being humans - we’ve come up with about 700 hybrids.

The common name comes from the Greek goddess, Hebe, the cupbearer to the gods who served up nectar and ambrosia at their mythological feasts. It really is the perfect name for this flower!

Colours vary from pure white, to soft pink and magenta, all the way through to rich deep purples. Leaves range from tiny wee things that can tolerate the cool southern weather (and the mountains) to large-leafed varieties that prefer warmer climes. Some are tight little balls of green, and others reach for the sky. As long as they get some light (even if that’s dappled light through the leaves of your kōwhai tree) you’ll be able to find a hebe for any spot in the garden, including a pot on your front porch.

They usually flower through summer and autumn (I saw at least two in bloom on my street earlier this week). This means they're a great source of pollen & nectar after the spring floral flush, and before the late autumn/early winter berries.

We have three varieties in our garden: two came with the house, and the third I planted. One is almost like a small tree, sprawling over our fence and driveway with its fluffy white flowers. The upshot of this is that we get volunteer seedlings growing from seeds that have dropped in the gravel. I'm then able to carefully dig them up and move them to a permanent home in the garden.

There’s a spot just outside our large dining room window where I was originally going to create a butterfly garden (it was a BIG fail - you can read about it here). The soil is quite poor so at the moment I mostly have wildflowers and spring bulbs in there, who are happy to grow in the dry conditions. It gets sun all day, though, so now I’m thinking I should have a look for any more volunteer seedlings and grow a garden of hebes (and maybe splurge on a plant or two).

I was in Ōtepoti/Dunedin for the last few days of Wild Dunedin and as I walked through town I kept an eye out for hebes. There were so many! I hadn’t really noticed them before, and I wonder if that’s partly because they are all so different. There were even some in Otago Museum’s outdoor butterfly garden.

So my message this week is to take a minute to notice the diversity of hebes in your neighbourhood - and maybe even add one to your own collection.

Happy hunting,

Zenobia

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You might also like…

• An Illustrated Guide to New Zealand Hebes, a book by M. Bayly and A. Kellow

• There’s no garden too tough, an article on Stuff about different types of hebe plants

• Hebe or Veronica, a 16min podcast about the evolutionary history of hebes

• View hebe observations on iNaturalist - and you can add your own, too :)