Bert Swope
Create a pollinator garden can bring many advantages. These include reduced pesticide and herbicide usage on crops, supporting ecosystem services, and attracting native pollinators species.
Pollinators such as native bees, moths, and butterflies, as well as birds, bats, and other animals, play an essential but often unsung role. They pollinate crops such as apples, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, melons, peaches, potatoes, vanilla, almonds and among many others.
Bees
Pollinators are key players in maintaining a sustainable food system. Responsible for pollinating 85% of flowering plants around the world and two-thirds of crops worldwide, pollinators populations provide essential services in supporting our global food system.
Pollinator gardens can help create a more natural landscape and reduce pesticide usage, while giving you the opportunity to spend time outside and teach children about its benefits.
Successful pollinator gardens start by selecting native wildflowers that thrive in your local soil and climate conditions, drawing bees and other pollinators species to your garden. These blooms will attract them all year-round!
An effective pollinator-friendly garden should contain a wide selection of flowering plants that bloom from spring through autumn, providing pollinators with multiple species to visit and maximize nectar collection.
Create flowers that provide nectar and pollen at regular intervals that emulate nature, using mass plantings to decrease travel times for bees to each plant. Bees tend to prefer bell-shaped blooms over flat disk shaped ones; thus grouping similar structures together will work in line with their preferences.
Make sure that any dead flowers are deadheaded so the new generation of blooms can take over come springtime. Dead flowers also serve as pollen and nectar sources for insects like butterflies and beetles that visit your garden.
An effective pollinator garden should contain nesting materials and protective habitats for pollinators, including hollow-stemmed plants, unused firewood, grass clippings, leaf litter and bare soil. Winter is an especially critical time to leave these habitats intact.
Butterflies
Pollinator gardens can bring many advantages, particularly if you live in an area brimming with butterflies. A butterfly-friendly garden helps increase populations, benefitting butterflies and the entire ecosystem.
Step one in creating a butterfly-friendly garden is selecting local species of plants, which have evolved with local soils and climate over hundreds of years to meet pollinator needs.
Information on selecting native plants can be found by consulting your local native plant society or Master Gardener chapter, and consulting other gardening experts as to where and how best to place the plants you select.
Pollinator gardens require variety to thrive; to achieve this goal, incorporate both perennials that bloom throughout the season as well as annuals that only bloom during specific times. This will open up more pollinator habitat while increasing your garden’s visual appeal.
Along with your flowers, be sure to create places for hummingbirds and butterflies to gather nectar such as shallow dishes of room temperature sugar water or natural resources like rotting fruit or moist animal droppings that provide nectar without pollinators needing to visit flower blooms directly. Other areas for butterflies and bees to rest, such as sun-drenched stones or pebbles also help.
Pollinator-friendly gardens have the added benefit of showing how food systems function as well as ecology more generally. A butterfly garden provides an ideal venue to demonstrate relationships among various insects such as bees and butterflies.
At your garden, there are several steps you can take to create an ideal habitat for pollinators. Most importantly, select a sunny site with shelter from prevailing winds such as through hedges, fences or mixed windbreaks of trees and shrubs.
Moths
Regardless of size, pollinator gardens can make an outstanding addition to any yard. From small patches of flowers planted around the home to full garden beds or container gardens on balconies and patios – pollinator gardens make an outstanding addition that anyone can appreciate!
Pollinator gardens offer many advantages. One such benefit is providing nectar, pollen, and host plants for insects, birds, bats, and other wildlife to enjoy as sources of sustenance; this will enable your garden to produce a wider selection of fruits, vegetables, and herbs that require pollination for proper growth.
Once established, pollinator gardens can be relatively straightforward to manage once planted. Selecting native wildflowers and perennial grasses that match up well with your soil type, climate, and local insects makes for easy upkeep of this type of garden.
Based on your region, planting native wildflowers and heirloom perennials that bloom at different times throughout the season to attract pollinators is key to creating blooming drifts of colorful long-blooming flowers that provide constant nectar sources for insects. By layering these various types of plants together, you can achieve vibrant drifts of long-blooming flowers providing nectar sources.
Include various flower shapes and types that cater to the various mouthparts used by pollinator animals, making your garden more appealing to more pollinators – ultimately leading to an increased population in your yard.
Add elements to your garden that attract moths and butterflies, like mud puddles, wet sand, tree sap, or decayed fruit or seeds – these natural attractants help moths and butterflies find your garden and are not expensive to purchase.
Birds
Pollinators play an integral part in many global crops. Their contributions help create fertile soil, which allows plants to reproduce, allowing farmers to provide healthy and nutritional food products for people worldwide.
One of the best ways you can help birds is to create a pollinator garden. This could range from something as small as planting some containers in your backyard to filling an entire plot with nectar- and pollen-producing plants.
Attracting multiple pollinators is key to creating an effective pollinator garden, so choose native species that draw them in. Mix annuals, perennials, and shrubs into your selection that bloom throughout the year for maximum interest.
Not only do plants provide pollen and nectar for pollinators pollination needs, but they can also offer shelter, reproduction, life cycle completion, and winter cover for pollinators such as ferns, shrubs, trees, or perennial plants such as broomsedge, bluestem or foxglove beardtongue.
An additional key to creating a pollinator garden is selecting plants that are easily accessible for insects – particularly hummingbirds with long beaks capable of reaching nectar-filled blooms.
Bees and butterflies tend to favor blooms with flat surfaces that offer an easy landing for their flights, such as flat, open structures with large petals that facilitate landing. Furthermore, these creatures prefer brightly-colored blooms.
Adding water sources near your pollinator garden is another smart strategy, such as birdbaths, puddling areas or shallow pie pans; just beware that pollinators could drown if drinking too deep of an amount.
As you select a spot for planting your pollinator garden, be mindful of how much sun the area receives during its growing season. This will allow you to determine which types of flowers will thrive best there.
Other Animals
Building a pollinator garden for animals like bees, bats, and birds offers many advantages. Not only can these hardworking insects pollinate crops and flowers efficiently; they also provide habitat for numerous other forms of plant life.
Bees, bats and butterflies aren’t just fascinating to observe: they play an indispensable role in our ecosystems and agriculture. Unfortunately, however, these insects face serious threats; honeybee populations are declining while monarch butterfly numbers have declined dramatically–which threatens North America’s agricultural economy and threatens our own food sources.
Bats are nocturnal animals that feed on bugs and pollinate plants at night, often misunderstood as miscreants by many people, yet are one of the world’s best insect pollinators species.
When designing a pollinator garden to attract bats, its key element should reflect their habitat: wide range of flower sizes and shapes together in clusters makes it easier for bats to find food sources and safe spots to rest.
No matter if you are starting from scratch or enhancing existing garden areas, selecting an area which is sunny and well-drained is key to providing pollinators with optimal conditions in which to flourish while also protecting them from insects or diseases. This will enable pollinators populations to thrive as well as prevent insect pests or diseases from appearing.
Pollinator gardens require host plants and shelter to support pollinators and beneficial insects during reproduction, life cycle completion, winter protection, and winter shelter needs. Host plants serve as vital resources that enable pollinators to complete life cycles successfully and provide winter refuge.
Host plants include perennial flowers and herbs that bloom throughout spring, summer and fall, providing food sources to native bees and other pollinators who rely on them for survival. Simply adding some host plants will significantly increase the number of pollinators visiting your garden.
