If you want to create a garden friendly to pollinators insects, native plants are an easy choice that adapt to local conditions while drawing pollinators insects to your garden.
Long-tongued bees like the garden bumblebee depend on tubular flowers like those found on foxgloves, penstemons, and snapdragons as an important food source.
Narrow Leaf Sunflower
Narrow leaf sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an indispensable back-border addition for native or pollinator gardens and naturalized areas, rain gardens, streams and ponds, rain gardens. If allowed to spread freely over time it will bring late summer with its profusion of flowers!
Narrow leaf sunflowers are a favorite food for Gold Finch birds and other seed-eating songbirds, providing a much-needed source of sustenance. When selecting cultivars such as Autumn Beauty or Fireworks with mixed flower colors and mature sizes.
Nasturtiums
Nasturtiums, perennial mint flowers with low maintenance needs and an array of colorful varieties, are hummingbird magnets due to their tubular shapes – perfect for sipping nectar! Hand pollination garden nasturtiums is easy and fun – helping ensure successful seed production!
Carl Linnaeus named nasturtiums Tropaeolum majus because their vivid petals reminded him of Roman trophy poles where armor and weapons of defeated Roman combatants were displayed. Nasturtiums can be harvested for salads or made into capers (do not harvest leaves or flower buds); also save their chickpea-sized seeds to plant next spring.
Fennel
Some pollinators, known as generalists, visit an array of flowers while specialists focus their visits exclusively on one specific kind.
Fennel (Fumaria annua) is an ideal plant to attract butterflies. Its leaves provide food sources for black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. Furthermore, the cottage garden-esque seed umbels add an attractive cottage garden-style appearance in mild climates; although reseeding and naturalization is quite likely in such environments; be sure to deadhead any unwanted reseeding that occurs! Fennel also makes an excellent partner plant alongside low maintenance perennials like coreopsis and cosmos.
Foxglove
Long-tongued bees and hummingbirds flock to this native penstemon’s tall flower spikes, drawing long tongues of pollination from long tongued bees and hummingbirds alike. Digitalis purpurea (Fingerflower or Fairy Gloves), also known as Foxglove is an evergreen woodland plant which thrives in wildflower gardens as well as naturalized areas between zones 4-9.
Deer and rabbit resistant, this plant is drought tolerant and adaptable to various soil conditions; new breeding has produced cultivars which bloom within their first year and freely reseed themselves, providing pollinators with flowers throughout the summer season and into winter for optimal garden ecosystem health.
Lupine
Plant a combination of flowers in your garden to provide pollinators with nourishment throughout spring, summer and fall. Include plants that bloom clumps as these are more likely to draw pollinators in than single flowers.
Lupine is a cool-season wildflower known for its striking blue blooms. This species thrives both on sandy soils and moist clay ones, and can grow as both an annual in the northern regions and perennially in warmer areas.
Lupine is a nitrogen-fixing legume with deep tap roots to access water resources and nutrients that other plants may struggle to reach, while self-seeding freely.
Milkweed
Milkweed is a favorite host plant of caterpillars and attracts monarch butterflies with its beautiful blooms. Easily adaptable to most climates and readily reproducible from seed.
Mix native plants together to attract pollinators species from far and wide, creating a welcoming habitat for wildlife while offering maximum pollinator benefits.
Focus your search on plants that satisfy both nectar and pollen requirements, such as foxgloves, lupines, snapdragons and monarda (bee balm). For winter food sources try long-tongued bees like garden bumblebees.
Borage
Borage attracts an assortment of pollinators species, especially honey bees. Bees love its blue star-shaped flowers that provide pollen and nectar sources.
Borage is an annual plant that thrives in sunny spots with well-drained soil, but will tolerate partial shade as well. Borage blooms throughout summer and will reseed itself each year, returning again and again as new plant material comes up through its roots.
Narrow Leaf Sunflowers are tall, easy-to-grow native wildflowers that support an array of pollinators species. They flourish best in sunny spots with average well-drained soil.
Buttonbush
This perennial stands out with its eye-catching, spherical flower clusters that add visual interest to mixed shrub borders and wet garden areas such as rain gardens or bog gardens.
Buttonbush is a pollinator magnet, drawing bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects to its flowers for pollination purposes. Furthermore, its fruits provide food sources for waterfowl and wildlife alike.
Buttonbush plants feature a dense foliage cover and round form that make them suitable for foundation plantings or focal points in garden design. Furthermore, buttonbushes can serve as focal points or specimens within landscape designs.
