A good pollinator garden isn’t something you create simply by growing nice-looking blooms. It’s the stuff that goes on behind the scenes: identifying which pollinators are at work; knowing their needs in all stages of their lives; and knowing how to feed them across great distances. That’s when a pollinator reference becomes genuinly useful rather than just decorative.
Not all pollinators is on a bee-sized scale; for instance honey bees fly multiple miles in search of nectar, meaning your garden is just one stop along their way. On the other hand, mason bees typicaly don’t range much farther then a few hundred feet from their nest, so if you’d like them to pollinate your fruit trees, those has to be right alongside where they’re raising their young. Leafcutter bees (and other solitary bee) work in a similar way. Understanding their range helps you decide whether an additional patch of flowers will reach the bees that need it.
How to Make a Good Garden for Pollinators
Location isn’t everything; so is your choice of plants. You want ones whose bloom overlaps to ensure a continuous supply of food for pollinators throughout the entire season, not a big splash and then nothing. (Those who make nectar for more than just a week or two…those ones.) That’s why this infographic, which shows plant by who they are valuable to, helps eliminate guessing when you have a dozen good-looking candidates all vying at once in the nursery.
That’s just one more thing: What about their nesting needs? A fancy hotel or wooden box isn’t required for every pollinator. Native bees do plenty of good work with nothing but some tilled but otherwise bare ground in a sunny area. Some depend on abandoned tunnels made by small mammals, or holes in hollow stems. Even if the flower is perfect, you could be eliminating nesting spots by clearing out all those dead bits and weed-filled corner.
Timing, seasonally, is another set of decisions to be made, since early pollinators may appear long before any garden plants comes into bloom, and late ones require sustenance once we have harvested the bulk of our vegetables. Because it supports all levels of activity throughout the year, this landscape isn’t meant just for summer showiness.
That’s the big one: believing that all types of flowers are created equal. Because many recent varieties has been selected for looks rather than easy access to nectar and pollen, single-petal flowers is much better than double ones (which are what you will mostly see in garden centers). And native plants generally fare better supporting specialist insects compared with exotic ornamentals, but there’s room for both if you pick your plants carefully.
Water is less discussed but just as important. Bees require a shallow water supply that’s not so deep that they drown when landing on it (a wet spot in the garden is sometimes easier than a birdbath). Hummers, however, require something else. They need tubular-shaped flowers and a place to nest near them. We would of cover more on how to provide that later.
Then it slowly begins to pay off. More action starts to happen on Year Two than Year One, and by Year Three…well, you get the idea. Perfection isn’t required; insects react more to consistency. After the general shape is established, little tweaks begin to add up. These might be things like leaving some bare ground uncovered or adding another early flower to the mix. All those little choices help a garden look welcoming and function as part of the natural world.