Tips for Native Pollinator Gardening at Home

Want a gorgeous, vibrant, and natural-looking yard that draws all kinds of amazing native insects? Follow our tips.

Plant Selection
Installation
Maintenance

Plant Selection

Prioritize Native Species

Native flowering plants are adapted to the climate and conditions in your area and have coevolved with native pollinators. Consult a regional native plant nursery and reputable online resources about what native flowers are best for your area.

Diversity Is Key

Pollinators come in a wide variety of different sizes, shapes, and capacities to manipulate flowers and need a diversity of floral forms. To attract and feed different members of the native pollinator community, you’ll want to plant native flowers with different shapes, sizes, and colors. Pollinators are also active at different times of the year, so aim for plants that will bloom in succession throughout your region’s growing season. Include early-blooming, mid-summer-blooming, and late-blooming species.

Consider Butterfly Larval Hostplants

Caterpillars (butterfly larvae) need to eat leaves and other plant material to mature into adult butterflies. For example, monarch butterflies’ larvae only feed on native milkweed. Adding butterfly hostplants to your garden supports them throughout their life cycle.

If you plant milkweed and live in a climate that won’t freeze, make sure to cut back the plants in the fall (by Oct. 1) to avoid harming monarch butterflies. Due to climate change, some areas increasingly fail to reach freezing temperatures, which means milkweed doesn’t die back and can build up a deadly parasite that interferes with monarch metamorphosis. Also, when milkweed fails to die back or dies back later than it should, it can cause monarchs to migrate too late or even fail to migrate. The problem is magnified by invasive, tropical milkweed in warm coastal areas that can encourage monarchs to stay all year — so always plant a native milkweed species.

Installation

Prepare the Soil

A pollinator garden will take time — possibly several years — to establish, so invest the time to make room for new plants to thrive. Remove or suppress unwanted plants before seeding or installing new plants. Native plants can be crowded out by other established plants, like grasses.

Source Plants From Reliable, Local Sources

Research the plant nurseries in your area to find nurseries that supply a variety of native flowering species. Avoid major gardening retailers, whose flowering plants have been shown to contain systemic pesticides that kill visiting honeybees. Systemic insecticides, like neonicotinoids, are broad-spectrum, indiscriminate toxics — unfortunately, commonly used in the United States — that can pervade plants’ tissues, including their pollen and nectar.

Plan Ahead

Many native plants are best installed at certain times of the year, like in the winter or early spring, when the plants are still dormant. Ask your nursery about the best time to install potted plants and when to spread seed.

Plant Species Together

Placing flowers of the same species in groupings mimics the distribution of plants in nature. It also helps pollinators find their preferred food source and reduces the energy required for them to efficiently gather pollen and nectar.

Maintenance

Be a Lazy Gardener — Leave the Leaves

A messy garden with dead plant stems, leaf litter, and bare soil is great for pollinators. Native bees and other pollinators need more than just flowers. To complete their life cycle, pollinating insects need places for their eggs and larvae to develop and overwinter. Loose, bare soil, dead plant stems, leaf litter, and woody debris can all provide needed nesting and overwintering sites for insect pollinators. An overly manicured garden removes leaf litter and dead stems that many pollinators need.

Go Chemical Free

Many pesticides are highly toxic to native pollinators, and you don’t need them for the establishment and maintenance of native pollinator gardens. Check out our list of ideas for nontoxic alternatives.