5 Easy Ways to Make Your Garden More Pollinator Friendly
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Time to read 2 min
Did you know that 1 of every 3 bites of your food depends on a pollinator, including the most common fruits and vegetables? And yet, pollinators are in trouble due to loss of nesting habitats, environmental contamination, misuse of chemicals, disease, and changes in climate. But you can help by creating a pollinator garden that's friendly to common pollinators, including bees, butterflies, birds, and other insects.
A pollinator garden is one that's planted to attract pollinating insects and birds. Planting a pollinator garden is a great way to create a space where wildlife can thrive, and it will also ensure your backyard is colorful, filled with gorgeous scents and varied all year round.
Step 1: Select a location for your pollinator garden
Whether you have a large flower farm or a small container garden, any gardener with any green space can create a pollinator garden. Before you begin planting, start off by getting to know your space, this includes your hardiness zone, sun exposure, and native plants for your region. Note that a pollinator garden should be getting around six hours of sun daily!
Step 2: Plant a diverse set of flowering native plants
Native pollinators feel at home among common, native species that are prolific. There are thousands of plants that can support pollinators, but these are a few of our favorites: Milkweed, Lavender, Camas Poppy, Lilac, Butterfly Bush, Cornflower, Mint, and Cape Fuchsia. To find out which pollinator-friendly plants are native to your region, check out the following resource: pollinators.org.
Step 3: Add woody plants, like trees and shrubs
Native trees and shrubs make excellent additions to a pollinator garden because they provide resources that herbaceous, perennial flowers often don’t. Trees and shrubs can provide homes for solitary bees, and many butterflies depend on tree leaves to complete their life cycles. As a bonus, trees and shrubs require very little maintenance after their first few years!
Step 4: Help pollinators thrive
A little water is extra hospitable to our pollinator friends! By offering a bird bath or shallow dish of water in your pollinator garden, you'll be sure to keep pollinators hydrated and happy. We recommend keeping the dish or bath shallow and clean to avoid drowning or standing water, which can attract mosquitoes or any bacteria. You can also hang a bird or bee house to encourage a longer stay!
Step 5: Use organic, non-toxic garden products
Synthetic chemicals may keep the bad bugs out, but they’ll keep the good ones out too! If you want a pollinator garden to succeed, avoid using synthetic chemicals. Several of the legacy garden brands or common ingredients that gardeners have been using for years are actually toxic to pollinators. Instead, switch to organic, non-toxic solutions, such as Arber!
If every home gardener nationwide created an environment, like a pollinator garden, to attract pollinators, we would add tens of thousands of acres for them to call home.
