What Is A Pollinator Garden? Grow Gorgeous Blooms While Benefiting Your Local Ecosystem

Creating a pollinator garden is an excellent way to preserve these partners of life while increasing your crop and flower yields. Pollinators are essential to fertilize plants and help them develop flowers, fruits, and seeds. Without pollinators, only plants that are wind or otherwise pollinated would be able to reproduce.

So, what is a pollinator garden? Selecting specific pollinator garden plants to install in your landscape will ensure your local pollinators are enticed to your garden and carry out this important duty. Beautiful blooming flowers, varieties of native plants and shrubs provide nutrition and shelter for these important garden friends while creating a beautiful aesthetic for you.

Pollinator Garden Basics

What would the world be without the bees? A pollinator garden will have a rich diversity of plant life and include habitat which attracts a variety of beneficial insects, providing them nesting sites, protection from predators, food, and other needs. A native pollinator garden is an especially excellent way to provide for all the insects' needs. Using wild plants will encourage the insects to flit and crawl into your garden space.

Nature provides everything they need in the wild, so gardening with native plants that are indigenous to your region is a sure way to lure these useful bugs to your home. Pollinator gardens feature a wide range of plant life, many blooming plants, but also niches and hiding places to protect the pollinators. Nectar producing plants as well as host plants for young will round out the garden.

Why Are Pollinator Gardens Important?

Without pollinators, only certain plants would be able to flower and fruit. In the wild, much native habitat is being destroyed by building, foresting, and other human activities. That means our pollinating insects lack food and other resources. Pollinators will transfer pollen from the stamen to the stigma, an act required for fertilization. They do this with their feeding activities and general movement. Planting keystone plants in your pollinator garden will provide even more benefit to your pollinators.

More than half the world’s consumed fats and oils come from plants that require pollinators. Much of the food we eat globally must be pollinated by these wonderful organisms. Pollinators are more than bees. Creating a pollinator garden can encourage a whole host of pollinating partners to come into our gardens.

Common Pollinators

Of course, we all know native bees pollinate. And with issues like colony collapse, they are under threat. But there are many other insects and even birds and animals that are part of this important chain of life. Bees and bee-like insects are apex pollinators. Bee-like insects are wasps and hornets. Although we don’t want these around our picnic tables, they are important parts of the fertilization process.

Butterflies are another commonly recognized pollinator, but so are the moths. Moths are important in pollinating flowers that open at night, and you can attract moths to your garden with some much-loved trees and shrubs too. Flies also take part in the transfer of pollen, and so do beetles of many varieties. Birds move pollen as they feed, as do bats. Other animals such as lizards also take part in the pollen moving process.

Pollinator Garden Design

• Flowers are an important lure for pollinators but they aren’t all that is required. Pollinators will also need a water source and natural material to hide and nest into. Products like bee cups and bee nurseries found in the Gardening Know How Shop can provide these necessities for your pollinators.
• There should also be host plants, or those that will support developing larvae and nymphs. Often the young insect does not dine on the same material as the adult and will need supplemental food to ensure successive generations.
• When selecting flowering plants, make sure there are blooms throughout the season. You can use long-blooming flowers or plant in succession to keep blooms coming.
• There should also be plants that bloom at night to support moths and bats and other nocturnal visitors. Consider making part of your garden a "moon garden" with night-bloomers and light colored plants.
• Cluster flowering plants of the same species together to attract the eye of the insects and other pollinators.
• Provide a diverse range of colors to draw in insects.
• Consider native grasses as part of the landscape, which will provide hiding places and often nesting sites.
• Above all, do not use pesticides which can seriously harm populations of beneficial insects.
• Consider installing a DIY insect “hotel”. You may purchase or build these yourself.

Pollinator Garden Plants

Attracting pollinators to your garden can be achieved by installing plants they like. Milkweed is the sole host plant for Monarch butterfly larvae, but it is also host to other species of pollinator. Bumblebees also rely upon the various species of milkweed for nectar. It is also hardy in USDA zones 3-10, a rather broad range which allows many gardeners to successfully grow the plants. Many other plants are also draws for our pollinator friends:

• Host plants: In addition to milkweed, many larvae of different species need specific types of plants upon which to feed. Willow, pipevine, plants in the parsley family, spicebush, viburnum, pawpaw, violets, and wild buckwheat are all crucial for different larval species.
• Early bloomers: Many insects are hatching or coming out of hibernation as spring temperatures warm. They need food. Early blooming flowers will help get them going until the garden is in full swing. Lungwort, bleeding heart, dandelions, peony, bugleweed, foxglove, and allium are all early flowering plants that are important food.
• Mid-season plants: Once things heat up, we have the option to grow many annual and perennial plants. Tickseed, globe thistle, coral bells, coneflower, lavender, hyssop, herbs, Joe Pyeweed, Asclepias, and bee balm are all favorites.
• Late season plants: As the nights lengthen and the evenings cool, our insect friends need sustenance more than ever. Fortunately fall offers a host of attractive plants. Asters, chrysanthemum, stonecrop, and goldenrod are but a few.
• Night blooming plants: Moths and bats do their good work at night and require plants that will provide nectar. Many species of cactus bloom at night such as Cereus and Saguaro. Evening primrose, foamflower, and night-blooming jasmine will all attract evening pollinators. Use white and pale colored flowers for nocturnal pollinators.

Providing diversity in the garden is key to helping our pollinating partners enjoy the landscape. The more opportunities to feed, nest, and mate, the more likely these beneficial bugs will stay in your landscape and enhance your flowers and crops.

More Pollination Inspiration

• Looking to take your pollinator garden to the next level? Get a pollinator garden certification and turn your yard into an official pollinator preserve!
• Explore the Pollinator Garden Collection in the Gardening Know How Shop. This collection features pollinator plants, seeds, and accessories to help you get started or expand your current pollinator garden.
• You don't have to have an enormous garden to benefit pollinators! Check out our suggestions for a potted pollinator garden that is great for small spaces or just for ease of maintenance.
• Check out our suggestions for native flowering shrubs for pollinators so that you can help the birds and bugs even with border plantings or hedges.
• Want even more inspiration, advice, and expertise delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for the free Gardening Know How Newsletter!

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