When planting a garden to attract pollinators, it is important to look at all the life cycles of the beneficial insects you are trying to help and to attract. Sometimes, we are just focused on that flashy butterfly feeding on nectar, but we need to also think about the less showy stages of the caterpillar and the cocoon. They need different plants at different stages. While focusing on the feeding stage of adult insects and butterflies is a great start, we invite you to dig a little deeper.
Tips to encourage a lively community of beneficial insects:
Have a community of plants that bloom for as long a time as possible. Think about early spring all the way to deep freeze
Leave debris in the garden over the winter. Do your “fall” clean up in the spring, once the soil is warm and all the eggs have hatched out of hollow stems, bark, under the leaves, and mulch. If you feel compelled to cut back the plants in the fall, leave them in piles on the edge of the garden to keep intact the winter habitat.
Instead of raking leaves in the fall, let them stay in place. they will break down and add to your garden soil. In the spring, any leaves that have not broken down over the winter can be added to parts of the garden that need the soil built up or you can add them to the compost pile.
Some of my favorite plants to include:
Valerian – easy, tall, and leaves you lots of woody, hollow stems for winter shelter. The while umbel flowers are attractive, and the seed heads persist all summer long, into the fall and winter.
Eupatorium – also known as Joe Pye Weed. This is a favorite native meadow plant that does well in heavy soils. It has huge, umbel shaped flowers in late summer, and the seed heads look great going into winter.
Echinacea and Rudbeckia – cone flowers and black eyed susan. These are mainstays of the perennial garden for a reason. They are easy to grow and attract many beneficial insects to the garden. Large patches of them are more effective than single plants here and there.
Try to create a big swathes of these plants, and create variation in height and texture by interspersing them with
Calamintah nepeta ssp nepeta photo credit: Stonehouse Nursery
Calamintha nepeta ssp nepeta
Salvia
Penstemon
Alium
Eryngium yuccafolium
Heliopsis
Helenium
Grasses
Finally, tuck in ground covers to help suppress weeds by covering all the bare soil:
Geranium maculatum
Geranium sanguineum
Tiarella
Lamium
Carex
Epimedium
Zinnias, verbena bonariensis, calendula, bronze leaf fennel, and tulsi basil are annual flowers and herbs that I love to introduce into the perennial garden or the vegetable garden. They do a great job of feeding a large group of insects and butterflies and will attract many pollinators to the vegetable and fruit garden. Plus their pops of color and varying textures charm and catch the eye from a distance.
Red Wagon resources to get you started:
Keep an eye out for Chad’s Beneficial Insect Seed Mix this year to try some of this at home, from seed.
We will be offering plant collections that include many of these varieties so that you can follow our formula without having to search each individual plant.
And you can take a workshop this Saturday, March 30th with Julia Parker-Dickerson to learn all about her experience making Pollinator Habitat Gardens in public spaces.
Thanks for caring about the smallest creatures.
Happy gardening,
Julie