Pollinator Friendly Gardens

Creating Pollinator Friendly Gardens

Adriane Good, MSU Extension Pondera County

I’m sure most people by now have heard about the recent declines in bee numbers and how worried many people are about the loss of pollinators. A common source of blame for the loss of pollinators is the destruction of their habitat. The good news is, you can help create more habitat for pollinators relatively easily!

Before you go creating pollinator habitat, it’s important to know what qualifies as a pollinator. Many people only think of bees as pollinators, but butterflies, birds, and bats also do the important work of pollination. You can encourage all of these helpful flying creatures to come visit by doing a few things: using integrated pest management, providing food, and providing a place for them to nest.

Using integrated pest management on the nuisance insects on your yard will help keep the pollinators happy. This includes applying insecticides in the early morning or late evening when pollinators aren’t as active and using other non-chemical methods of pest control. This can be as simple as removing food sources for the nuisance bugs or as complicated as finding their native enemies and releasing them.

Pollinators also need a place to nest if they are going to come live in your yard. For most of our native pollinator insects, they live alone instead of in a hive. Most of them like to nest in undisturbed soil or rotting wood. Leaving patches of your garden undisturbed provides a home for those ground nesting pollinators, while leaving some brush piles laying around will provide a place for those that like building nests in wood. Brush piles don’t match the aesthetic of your yard? Instead, you can use untreated wood for your fences and lawn furniture to provide a place for pollinators to live.

And finally, a food source is important. While all flowers provide some sort of pollen and nectar, the ones that have lots of small blooms provide much more. These ones will attract much more pollinators. It’s also important to provide a variety of flowers for the pollinators to sample. You should aim to have flowers blooming all season long, from May to September. Having a variety of early and late bloomers, and a variety of flower sizes and colors will attract the greatest variety of pollinators. You also will want to plant your flowers in groups and make sure you have more than one of each kind. When you think about flowers in native prairie, you rarely see just one solitary buffalo bean, you see several all over the place. This is the way flowers naturally grow and it is better at attracting pollinators. Planting your flowers in drifts of at least 3 of each variety will help keep the pollinators coming back for more.

While a large variety of flowers is important, avoid planting noxious and obnoxious weeds. Some noxious weeds can be quite pretty and probably attract some pollinators, but they spread very quickly and are incredibly difficult to get rid of. Make sure you are checking to make sure you’re not planting something that your neighbors will get quite mad at you for. For this reason, pre-made wildflower packets can be dangerous. If you are planting a wildflower mix, make sure the weed seed percentage is low and the species listed are all acceptable to be grown here. I happen to have some wildflower packets in my office that came from Lake County Conservation District and have all native flower species in them. If you would like one of these packets, feel free to contact our office at 271-4054!