Bees in my yard love the cranesbill and the sedum Autum Joy is a favorite usually covered with buzzing bees. I noted at Rob Proctor's garden that he plants this thyme around some of his veggies as shown in this picture:

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vegetable-garden-in-the-garden-saturday-june-13-2015-at-rob-news-photo/477029780

When I visited his garden in June, that thyme had SO many bees on it that it looked like a moving bee carpet. It was wild.

Hey Zach! Thanks for the suggestions. I'm totally ok with non-edibles as long as they feed something-- so lavender, bee balm, and echinacea are all winners as far as I'm concerned. I actually had a really lovely echinacea that the rabbits trimmed for me earlier this year. I'm not planting up the beds until we have the rabbit fence installed :-P

We are considering a plum. Mt Royal was the variety suggested by the tree guy at Timberline-- do you know anything about it?

You are a veggie guy, right? I may need to ask you some questions regarding water. We did a container garden this year to avoid the soil issues and it is doing fantastically so far, but I keep getting conflicting advice on water and I'm afraid my tomatoes might be getting a little stressed...

Oh, rabbits, they have been "tuber pruning" my potatoes this year, wretched things. If it were November or December I'd be eating hasenpfefer and getting a return on my investment, but, chances are they will hole up and hide once they are safe to eat, much to my chagrin.

One rule I have heard about for bees is they prefer blue/purple flowers, followed by yellow. I guess they can't really "see" the red spectrum very well or something like that. They also adore mint and basil flowers, and borage is a good one as well (although, except for the flowers, the plant itself is hideous and a huge reseeder. It's also an annual, not sure if your into that).

If you want to attract a cool native pollinator, grow lots and lots of squash! Squash bees ONLY visit squash flowers and they are so neat! They will even sleep inside the flower once it closes in the late morning, lol. I have never had to hand pollinate a zucchini, though, I had to disappoint them this year because powder mildew was so awful last year I took a break from growing even cucumbers.

Anyways,,,

I looked up the Mt. Royal plum and I THINK we had one of those at our house as a kid. It survived for several years, though, I did not grow up in a gardening household and it slowly declined until it eventually quit giving fruit, and then it died. The stump where it grew is still there. We did get lots of fruit from it the first few years we lived here, much more than we could ever use fresh (and we would GORGE ourselves on them) and I think the one year dad tried his hand at canning them there was still bushel baskets left over on that tree. Squirrels were a major pest of them, but, I think that's true of ANY fruit tree. Another "pest" you will encounter growing fruit is bears if you happen to live near them. But, if you live in the major suburban area, probably not a problem lol.

Once again, I get off on a tangent, geez louise!

Back on topic....

To be honest, I think I personally prefer the American plum flavor, its more tart/acidic, which I enjoy. But, I think either kind will work good for you, especially if it was recommended to you by an actual nurseryman and not a lay person who only has slight, anecdotal knowledge of growing fruit trees haha.

P.s. start a new thread on veggies, who knows where this one might end up if we go down that rabbit hole here on this one!

Oh cool! I'll keep an eye out for the squash bees. My cuke and pumpkin are flowering, but the yellow squash and zucchini are just getting ready to go-- I feel like everything in the garden is running about a month behind. The peas kind of held everything up. Well, the peas and the May snow...

I'll put together some coherent veggie questions tomorrow. The big one that I was trying to tackle ("what the heck is wrong with this tomato plant?") got answered by the CSU extension agent on Monday (verdict: Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus. Hopefully the rest of the plants have been spared!)

InBetween, if you'll PM me with your address, I have a couple "sheets" for hummingbird and butterfly gardening (plants and a little more info) that I can attach to an email and send to you!

Have you figured out how to PM people here on houzz? Go to "my page" and click on "send me a message."

Skybird

Inbetween,

My mom wanted something similar to what you're proposing. She has Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, Golden delicious apple trees, 2 pears and I planted Saskatoon, Shadblow and Regent serviceberry for her in spring of 2014. No berries yet on the serviceberries, they're still establishing. They're growing well so far. She also has Nannyberry, Summer Magic and Allegheny viburnums, raspberries and blackberries as well.

One comment on conifers, they offer some wildlife value in shelter and nesting spots, so if you have them give some thought to keeping them if possible. They also give you something green to look at during our long leafless seasons.

Barb

Thanks sky bird! I'll send you a pm today. I really appreciate it!

barb, thank you for the fruit suggestions. It's good to have a starting point with some dependable varieties to look out for. I had never even heard of service berries until the ladies at harlequin gardens up in Boulder mentioned them, and now I'm really excited to get them going. As for the conifers, I won't be pulling them. They make a lovely foundation planting, but right now it's lonely conifer, 10-15 feet of landscape rock, lonely conifer, more rock, random bush, ect. The bones are there, but it is rather sparse and bleak. The trees I want to pull are a sickly aspen and a volunteer popler. Neither one is really contributing anything and I'd rather replace them with something more decorative, healthy, and, well, fruitful ;-)

I get the biggest hits from bees in my yard from sweet marjoram, borage, basils allowed to flower, onion blossoms, carrots flowering in their second year, and cranesbills. Tomatillo flowers are popular, too.

Overall, none of these have more pollinators than the marjoram, which is one very popular plant.