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How To Create a Pollinator Garden

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Interested in creating your own pollinator garden? Below are easy tips to follow, as well as resources for purchasing natives and identifying what plants are native to your area.

  • Go organic. Any pesticides, herbicides or non-organic fertilizers will harm the pollinators. If you’re starting a new garden, replenish with organic soil. 
  • Don’t use too much mulch. Ground nesting bees need to get at the soil. Use organic mulch lightly or natural leaf litter.
  • Leave the leaves and stems in the fall. Bees, larvae and insects make winter homes in the stems and stalks of plants, as well as leaf cover. Wait to tidy up your garden until the spring. 
  • ​Plant in clusters. Pollinators like to save energy and hate to travel far for the next flower.
  • Stagger bloom times. Plant varieties that bloom at different times so that there's a continuous nectar source throughout the season. 
  • Choose native plants. Although they are widely available, varieties like hybrids, cultivates and nativars are not supportive for pollinators like butterflies and bees in all their life cycles. Rarely do garden stores have true natives. If any plant has quotation after its names it is a hybrid. For example, Sunflower, “Sunbright Supreme” or Coneflower, “Pow Wow, Wild Berry.”  A native would just have its name Purple Coneflower and its Latin name like Echinacea Purperea.

Below are listed some recommended places to purchase true native plants. 
The following nurseries also carry some native varieties. 
You can also use apps like Seek and Pl@ntNet to identify native versus non-native plants.
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For more information on native species in your region, check out: