It is the first time suburb planners have chosen plants which flower year-round, specifically to cater to native bees and improve the ACT's biodiversity.

"New urban developments are often seen as bee deserts ... where bees don't have either water or food that they can forage through the year," Ginninderry sustainability manager Jessica Stewart said.

"There's been a real push and acknowledgement within the community that bees are really important for food production and for lots of different habitats."

"Pollinator corridors" run through the newest suburb of Macnamara to a conservation site at the Murrumbidgee River, with plants which flower at different times and are pollinated by native species.

ACT For Bees founder Julie Armstrong led that push by including pollination and flowering information on the list of government approved plants, to make it easier for planners to think about how they can look after native bees.

"We've got a huge range of native bees," Ms Armstrong said. "They're usually solitary, they live in the ground and they have a very short flight range of 500 metres."

"They're actually quite vulnerable."

Ms Armstrong said while honey bees can travel up to 10 kilometres to pollinate and were "generalist" seeders, many native species relied on specific flowers.

"There is this amazing relationship between some flowers and some bees ... [one] flower may need one particular bee to be pollinated and produce the next generation of flowers.

"If the bee disappears the flower will too."

Ginninderry landscape manager Matthew Frawley said all new suburbs should take up the idea which comes at no higher cost.

He said it was easy to include from the outset, but retrofitting older suburbs "would require a much bigger commitment".

"There's a lot of potential for development like this to establish a really healthy pollinating network instead of it being a mono-culture," Mr Frawley said.

"There's no real greater cost to purchase these plants. There's no greater cost to establish them. There's no greater cost to maintain them."

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Environment Minister Rebecca Vassarotti said Ginninderry was "showing real leadership" and the idea should be considered across Canberra's new suburbs, including Molonglo.

"There's an opportunity for us to be thinking about this in terms of what we're doing in our public spaces ... as well as our backyards," she said.

Ms Armstrong said while the government could lead, residents can take up the fight to save the bees in their own backyard.

"It's really about all of us planting for year round flowering, having natives, particularly shrubs," she said.

"We can plant a native garden in all sorts of different places, including apartments ... if you don't have much room then plant herbs, and let them flower."

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