Italians love flowers, and that includes people as well as bees.
The geranium is the flower most commonly associated with Italy. Both zonal and ivy geraniums are popular choices for the balconies and terraces of Italian homes.
Geraniums also fit nicely into an English cottage garden. Gertrude Jekyll pronounced that “[t]here are no better summer flowers than the single and double zonal pelargoniums that we commonly call geraniums…” She used them to fill in bare spaces in the border and in containers. They are still perfect for those purposes.
While pelargoniums do not have the reputation of being popular with bees, that has not been my experience. They seem to especially love the ivy geraniums in my window boxes.