The Many Benefits of Pollinator Gardens

Pollinators like bees, butterflies, ladybugs, hummingbirds, and even wasps are incredibly important to not just the survival of plants, but humans, too. Tragically, many native pollinator populations are declining thanks to pesticides and the absence of critical plants they depend on.

We didn't just pave paradise. We covered it with lawns that don't do a whole lot of good for anyone, you know?

As gardeners, we can do our small part to help the pollinators out by giving them space in our yards dedicated to them and their needs. This space doesn't have to look completely wild. I like to say, Formal on the outside, wild on the inside. Be sure to follow my garden design tips if you'd like to achieve a slightly more manicured look in your space.

In addition to looking great, your pollinator garden can be easy to tend, even if you're a beginner gardener. The plants I recommend are super low maintenance. After you set up your pollinator garden space, there won't be much required of you except to step outside and enjoy.

Most importantly, your little space will become a playground for wildlife. Sometimes I try to count all the hummingbirds and butterflies visiting just one little patch of my pollinator garden here in Nashville, and I can't keep up!

Things to Keep in Mind When Planning Your Pollinator Garden

According to the U.S. Forest Service, the ideal pollinator garden:

• Includes a wide variety of plants that bloom from early spring into late fall.
• Features mostly native plants, which are adapted to your local climate and soil (and your pollinators are, in turn, adapted to these plants).
• Avoids modern hybrids, especially flowers with double layers, which have been bred to be beautiful but have lost a lot of their needed pollen, nectar, and fragrance in the process.
• Avoids the use of pesticides.

I'll give you recommendations below for plants to grow in your pollinator garden so that you have a good starting point. Still, it's a great idea to also do a little research on your own to learn more about native plants in your area. If you plant a mix of my recommendations alongside some native plants, you'll have yourself a low-maintenance and absolutely beautiful space that does real good for your friendly neighborhood pollinators.

Can You Have a Pollinator Garden in Your Front Yard?

My Chicago kitchen garden was on the side of my house, right next to our kitchen and garage. It was visible from the street, so I wanted it to look nice at all times. On installation day, I set up a less formal space to grow flowers and serve as an entryway to my garden right in front of the raised beds.

This in-ground pollinator garden was a space of beauty, but even more important than that, it brought in the good guys—those bees, ladybugs, butterflies, and hummingbirds that helped my fruits, herbs, and vegetables thrive.

Before you add any type of garden in your front yard though, check with the bylaws for your HOA, if you have one.

Pollinator Garden Design Tips

My pollinator gardens tend to be a little unconventional (I regularly grow broccoli, potatoes, and other plants that I don't want to grow in my raised beds alongside flowers), but I make an effort to keep them as beautiful as possible, especially if they're visible from the street.

Here are some lessons I've learned to keep pollinator gardens looking their best.

Make Your In-Ground Beds About 3 Feet Wide

A width of 3 feet means there's enough space to plant and grow lots of different flowers and native plants (and potatoes), but you can still reach inside to plant and tend easily.

If you have a vegetable garden, consider surrounding your entire garden with in-ground beds, if possible. This creates a sort of barrier between wildlife that might come into your yard and your edible plants.

Line the Edges of the Space

Use plastic or metal edging, bricks, or even evergreen plants to line the space. Garden edging is a great way to keep soil and mulch in while keeping your lawn out of the garden space. A defined border also adds a bit of formality, keeps the space looking nice and tidy, and makes mowing easier.

Evergreens are a great border to consider if you don't have to worry about grass creeping into the garden. In my Chicago garden, I lined the space with boxwoods. They added so much visual appeal throughout the seasons, even when everything was covered in snow during winter. Added bonus: shrubs and bushes give hummingbirds a nice little resting place.

(Learn more about garden edging.)

Add Pathways

Pathways invite people to step inside the space and watch the bees and butterflies. Pathways also allow the gardener to move around without having to worry about compacting the soil or trodding on tender plants trying to grow from seed.

In my Chicago garden, I had a pathway that bisected my pollinator garden. Whenever I planted something on one side of the path, I tried to mirror it on the other side for the added beauty of symmetry.

Add Some Taller Structures

It's nice to incorporate some type of trellis in the plant space for vining plants to add vertical interest. You could also add a bird bath or fountain.

The Best Plants & Flowers to Grow in a Pollinator Garden

It's great to have a mix of plants, including perennials and annuals, in your pollinator garden. Annuals are easy to grow from seed, but their time in your garden is limited. Perennials die back during the winter and then pop back up in the spring, beautiful as ever.

Flowers are, of course, beloved by our pollinators, but you don't have to limit yourself to just flowers in your beds. Evergreen shrubs, herbs, and even grasses make great additions to your garden. Grasses especially provide places for wildlife to hide and raise their young. They're also beautiful and add a softness to your plant space.

If you're having trouble deciding what to grow, it's okay. You don't have to narrow it down to just 2 or 3 options. In fact, diversity is key! Having a large variety of flowering plants means their blooms will be staggered, which gives our pollinators and songbirds food for longer periods of time. Goldenrod, for example, flowers long after other blooms are fading, so it's wonderful to throw in the mix. It's also great to have lots of different colors, flower shapes, and sizes to appeal to different types of pollinators.

Here are some of my top annual and perennial flowers recommendations.

Annuals

• Balsam
• Borage
• Calendula
• Cilantro
• Coreopsis
• Cosmos
• Dill
• Sunflowers
• Sweet alyssum
• Zinnias

When in doubt, just scatter some zinnia seeds. You can't ask for something prettier or easier to grow than zinnias.

Perennials

• African blue basil
• Anise hyssop
• Bee balm
• Blazing star
• Dahlias
• Daisies
• Echinacea/Coneflower
• Feverfew
• Goldenrod
• Lemon balm
• Milkweed
• Mountain mint
• Pineapple sage
• Rudbeckia
• Sneezeweed
• Tansy
• Veronica/Speedwell
• Yarrow

The Best Time to Plant Your Pollinator Garden

In the spring, you can start planting native plants and perennials as soon as your soil is workable and you're out of the woods for hard frost. It's best to pause adding new plants to your garden during the heat of summer unless you're ready to water them frequently while they get established. In the fall, you can plant again until you're about 6 to 8 weeks before your first frost.

You can begin sowing seeds 2 to 3 weeks before your average last frost date in the spring. Some seeds, anise hyssop for example, need to be in the cold, wet ground for a bit before they sprout. When I lived in Chicago, I would direct seed my pollinator garden in April. If you live in a warmer climate, you can plant more seeds in the fall. When I lived in Houston, I would sow seeds for native wildflowers in October for a glorious spring bloom.

Tips to Source Seeds & Plants for Your Pollinator Garden

You have two options when it comes to filling your pollinator garden: you can buy plants from a local nursery or start them from seed.

BUYING PLANTS

Buying plants is a great option for perennials that will spend a long time in your garden space. I highly recommend heading to the nursery and buying your plants from a local grower rather than a big box store. Check that your plants weren't grown with a bunch of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Since one of the main reasons to grow a pollinator garden is to give tons of delicious, healthy food to bees and butterflies, you don't want to be offering them anything less than organically grown treats.

Don't be afraid to ask questions at the nursery. Check out all their native plant options, including native grasses, which will be easier to care for in your landscape than non-natives. You might even find varieties of echinacea, milkweed, and daisies that are native to your area. Doublecheck that certain perennials like yarrow and tansy aren't considered invasive in your area before planting them.

STARTING FROM SEED

Annuals like cosmos and zinnias are super easy and fast to grow from seed. Just like with plants, prioritize organic when you're shopping for seeds. Ideally, buy locally-sourced seeds that haven't been treated with anything. If you're feeling choice overload, look for seed mixes designed to attract pollinators at your local nursery. You could also google "native wildflower seeds in [your town]".

The chances are that not every single flower will bloom at once (or at all), but it’s really fun to see what grows over time. Remember, staggering bloom times is actually best for the pollinators.

Now, let's look at how to set up and get growing in your pollinator garden.

Step One: Pick the Best Location for Your Pollinator Garden

The first thing to do is pick a sunny spot for your pollinator garden. You'll need at least 8 hours of sunlight a day to maximize flower blooms. If you'll need to water in between rain, it's also a good idea to pick a spot near a spigot or water source.

Once you've selected your spot, use stakes and string to mark off the entire space you’ll be using for the pollinator garden.

Step Two: Prepare the Garden Bed

Native plants and many of these pollinator-friendly plants don't have any special soil requirements, so they're perfectly happy growing in the ground.

If you have existing grass, you can remove it using tools like a hula hoe (good for stubborn roots) or a sod cutter. (Consider renting or borrowing a sod cutter if one's necessary.) If your space isn't level, transfer topsoil from high spots to bring up low spots.

One alternative to removing grass is to do something called sheet mulching, or lasagna gardening. Basically, you'll build your garden right on top of your existing lawn, no digging required. You simply lay down cardboard and then cover it in layers of compost, leaves, and other natural things that break down over time. You can actually plant in a lasagna-style garden that very same day, or you can let it sit for a while so that the layers break down and turn into soil. Learn more about sheet mulching to set up your garden space.

Add some kind of border to the edge of the garden space to contain your materials, and then add some topsoil and compost to the surface of the bed if you haven't already. Some people mulch their pollinator gardens, but I'm personally not a fan of mulch. It's not ideal for planting flowers seeds because it keeps the little seeds and their first roots from touching wet soil. It's also not necessary for water retention if you use the plants themselves to shade the soil on hot days.

You can always add straight compost to your in-ground bed, but the downside of compost in the ground is that it can get muddy.

Step Three: Add Plants

You'll fill in your space with any plants you've purchased from your local nursery before sowing seeds.

There aren't any rules to how you arrange the plants in your pollinator garden. It's meant to be a little wild. I like to use a mix of plants and arrange them in clusters. Stagger smaller and larger plants to ensure they'll fill in the space within a short period of time.

If the plants cover most of the soil, this will help conserve the nutrients and water in the native plant space. It also gives more spots for wildlife to hide and nest and raise their young.

I often buy plants for native spaces and pollinator gardens in twos or threes so that I can block them together to create little groupings of plants that can be repeated throughout a large bed. Make sure to keep any trees and bushes at the back of the space so that they don't interrupt the view of other parts of the garden and so that the taller plants don't block too much sun from other plants.

If you're planting something that you know will spread, be sure to give it plenty of room. You can always come back and divide these perennial plants and spread them to other areas of the garden. That's one of the beauties of this type of garden.

Step Four: Scatter Seeds

My trick for sowing flower seeds is to mix the seeds with some coarse sand (the kind you can buy from the hardware store). The sand helps you see where the seeds have been planted, and it also helps to spread the seeds a bit better. Scoop one handful of seeds for every handful of sand—simple as that—and mix them together. 

I direct sow the seeds right into the top of the soil in my pollinator garden. This garden is, after all, for nature, so you don’t have to worry about things being perfectly spaced. I scoop up a handful of my seed and sand mixture and then lightly shake the mixture over the ground. 

Birds will eat these seeds, so cover them up a little bit by taking a hand rake and gently moving some soil over the seeds. 

Step Five: Water the Seeds in Your Pollinator Garden

Your seeds are now ready for a good watering in. Water enough to get the ground nice and wet without flooding the bed and dispersing the seeds you just planted. Once your flowers grow, you won’t need to water as much because the plants provide good ground coverage from the sun. (Plus, if you went with native seeds, they should be used to the level of rainfall you receive in your area.)

If you planted your flower seeds a little too intensively, you can come back in later (once things have started to pop up) and thin a bit with a pair of scissors to make sure everything has the space it needs to thrive. 

How to Tend Your Pollinator Garden

Plants like yarrow will spread themselves each season via lateral roots. These plants will take over a space if you let them. A great thing to do is divide them up and put them in other parts of your landscape so you don't end up with just a yarrow bed.

The more native your flowers, grasses, and shrubs are, the less supplemental watering or tending you'll need to do.

If you notice the leaves of your pollinator garden are being munched on by caterpillars, don't panic or reach for the sprays. That's a good thing. Those caterpillars will become the butterflies that will soon be helping your edible plants thrive! Remember, we're not here to control nature. We're here to give nature some beautiful spaces to do its thing, and that's what your pollinator garden will become.

Spread the Pollinator Love

That's pretty much all there is to creating your own pollinator garden. In just a short time, those seeds you scattered will sprout and grow, and you’ll have jewel-toned petals and sweet-scented blooms sending out invitations to every bee, butterfly, and hummingbird nearby.

(And if you planted your pollinator garden in the front yard like mine, you'll also catch your neighbors hanging around to watch the wonder that is a garden buzzing with life.)

I hope your flower garden brings you as much joy as it brings helpful pollinators to your outdoor space! Here's to doing real good in our landscapes!