How to Make a Pollinator Garden Bees & Butterflies Will Love

Creating a pollinator garden is a great way to support your local bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Sometimes called a bee garden or a butterfly garden, creating a dedicated space in your yard for at-risk pollinators is good for the environment and your family.

A pollinator garden can turn even a small corner of your yard into a source of food and habitat for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other beneficial insects. And you don’t need a huge yard to do it.

The best pollinator gardens provide nectar and pollen, host plants, water, shelter, and a pesticide-free place to feed and reproduce throughout your growing season.

Here’s how to create a pollinator-friendly garden that works with your space and supports the species that live in your area.

How to Create a Pollinator Garden

A small garden bed, sunny corner of the yard, or collection of containers can provide valuable food and habitat for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other beneficial visitors.

1. Choose the Right Location

Start by looking for an area that gets plenty of sunlight. Many of the flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen for pollinators grow best with at least six hours of sun each day.

Your pollinator garden can be a dedicated garden bed, part of an existing vegetable or flower garden, or even a collection of containers on a patio or balcony. Visit your local ReStore or other area resource centers to find supplies to build a garden bed, or try some of these repurposed planter ideas. For smaller yards or urban areas, grow bags are a simple and easy solution. If your yard is mostly shady, you can still support pollinators by choosing native plants that naturally thrive in woodland or partial-shade conditions.

2. Start With Native Plants

Native plants are one of the best foundations for a pollinator-friendly garden because they have developed alongside the insects and wildlife in your region. They can provide familiar sources of nectar, pollen, seeds, and habitat while often requiring less water and maintenance once established.

The right plants will vary depending on where you live, so look for species native to your particular region rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all list. Our guide to the benefits of native plants explains more about why they’re so valuable and how to start incorporating them into your yard.

3. Plant Flowers That Bloom From Spring Through Fall

A garden filled with flowers in June may look beautiful, but pollinators need reliable food sources for much more of the year.

Choose a mix of plants with different bloom times so something is flowering from early spring through late fall whenever possible. Planting several of the same species together in small clusters can also make flowers easier for bees and butterflies to find as they move through your garden.

4. Include Host Plants as Well as Nectar Plants

Flowers provide nectar for adult butterflies, but a truly butterfly-friendly garden also needs plants that support the next generation.

Butterflies lay their eggs on specific host plants, which provide food for their caterpillars once they hatch. Monarch caterpillars, for example, depend on milkweed, while black swallowtail caterpillars feed on plants such as parsley, dill, and fennel. Most years, in my region, curly parsley survives the winter. But one year the caterpillars decimated it in three days, so I’ve learned to plant more parsley in different areas of my raised bed garden.

Consider companion planting to diversify and maintain garden health, making a positive impact and an easier garden experience for everyone. 

5. Provide Water and Shelter

Pollinators need more than flowers. A shallow water source can provide a safe place to drink, especially during hot, dry weather. Keep it shallow and add pebbles or stones that give insects a dry place to land.

Plants themselves can provide valuable shelter, too. Shrubs, grasses, fallen leaves, hollow stems, bare patches of soil, and less-manicured corners of the garden can offer nesting or overwintering habitat for different pollinator species.

6. Skip Pesticides and Herbicides

Keep your garden pollinator safe by making it a pesticide-free zone. There are lots of ways to manage garden pests naturally. You don’t want to invite a dwindling population into your pollinator garden just to have them suffer from pesticide use.

Instead, focus on healthy soil, diverse plantings, hand-picking pests when practical, and other natural garden-management methods. A little imperfection is often a good sign in a pollinator garden. A few chewed leaves may simply mean your garden is doing exactly what you created it to do.

Do Pollinator Gardens Need Full Sun?

Most pollinator gardens do best with plenty of sunlight because many nectar-rich flowering plants prefer full sun. Aim for about six hours of direct sunlight if your space allows.

That doesn’t mean a shady yard can’t support pollinators. Native woodland plants and other shade-tolerant flowering plants can provide valuable food and habitat, so choose plants suited to the conditions you already have. A bird bath, a hummingbird feeder, a small pond, or even little fairy gardens tucked into shady areas are all useful to various pollinators. 

Pollinator-Friendly Plants to Consider

Of course, the best way to make your yard a quick attraction for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators is to plant flowers. Native plants and pollinator-friendly flowers are beautiful and diverse, and many of them have wonderful benefits for humans, too! 

Try planting these specific pollinator flowers for lovely and beneficial results that will bring the bees to your yard!

Milkweed

Milkweed is an attractor of bees, wasps, and butterflies. Because they produce a lot of nectar and replenish their supply every night, nocturnal moths are also attracted to them. Larger bees are especially effective at transferring pollen from milkweed to other plants.

Milkweed is so valuable to pollinators that you can get free milkweed seeds to help boost Monarch butterfly populations. Ideally, you’ll include a donation to the organizations that offer these programs.

Lavender

Lavender is a useful, fragrant, and beautiful plant with several varieties. It has tons of uses in the yard, in the home, and medicinally. The lovely aroma of lavender will bring a calming presence to your yard and will draw in bees and butterflies, too! Don’t forget to make yourself some lavender lemonade, too. 

Anise Hyssop

Anise hyssop is a perennial plant with light green leaves and beautiful-looking fuzzy purple blooms. Part of the mint family, this plant adds aesthetic value but is just as enticing to pollinators as mint. It is sweet and mildly minty in flavor, edible for humans, and has just as much medicinal value as mint. Try this herbal soda with anise hyssop! 

Coneflowers

Coneflowers, or echinacea, have a unique look that is loved by gardeners and every bee, butterfly, and many birds! Also super beneficial to humans, these flowers are an asset to every yard. They self-seed, and come in a variety of colors. Coneflowers tend to grow well in pots too. 

Bee Balm

Bee balm, also known as wild bergamot, is such a pretty and colorful addition to a bee garden. They come in a variety of bright colors such as pink, lavender, and red. Known and named for treating bee stings with its medicinal properties, this is a handy flower for us to grow in our yards. The blooms are also edible and make a beautiful salad topper! 

Borage

Borage is a cute annual blue flower that makes a great companion plant for tomatoes, strawberries, and squash, making this a wonderful pollinator flower for someone with an existing garden.

Also called a star flower, these will bring all of the pollinators around while helping to keep tomato hornworms away with the attraction of braconid wasps as well as several other bee species. 

Butterfly Bush

Butterfly bushes are known for attracting butterflies, to your garden’s advantage. The small purple flowers look quite a bit like lilacs, but they have a much longer bloom season. Planting this perennial pollinator is a great opportunity for a little bit of shade underneath to give bees a little water and a shady place to rest.

Yarrow

Yarrow is a dainty flower that is usually white or pink. Its leaves look feathery and are a beautiful bright green. In addition to supporting the pollination population, yarrow has lots of medicinal uses for humans, too! 

Calendula

Calendula is an orange delight of a flower that bees love. It has a peppery taste and tons of skin-soothing uses. It comes back every year on its own and is a perfect flower to disperse around your existing garden and yard wherever there is space. 

Chives

Chives are tasty and fragrant, and if you let them flower their purple puffy blooms are an asset to bees and butterflies! Plus they make a tasty addition to your herb garden. You can even use a few flowers in this chive blossom vinegar. 

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are favorites of honey bees and native bees. Pollen from these tall yellow blooms is known for improving the immune systems of bumble bees and honey bees, so definitely make space in your summer garden for sunflowers!

If you’re looking to give the gift of pollinators, check out these garden gifts and include a butterfly lover seed kit!

More Pollinator Friendly Plants and Flowers

Here’s a comprehensive list of plants that can help attract butterflies to your yard. Butterflies and hummingbirds instinctively avoid pesticides, so if anything in your garden needs treatment, make sure it’s a natural or organic intervention.

Flowers:
Aster
Black-Eyed Susan
Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Coneflowers
False Nettle
Hollyhock
Indian Paintbrush
Lantana
Mallow
Nasturtium
Rue
Ruellia
Shasta Daisy
Silver Brocade
Snapdragon
Spider flower
Swamp Verbena (Verbena hastata)
Tall Verbena (Verbena bonariensis)
Violet
Water Dock
Wild Senna
Woodland Stonecrop

Herbs:
Dill
Fennel
Parsley
Yarrow

Grasses:
Little Bluestem Grass
Orchard Grass
Panic Grass

Shrubs:
Coontie
False Indigo
Spicebush

Vines:
Passion Flowers
Pipevine

These plants make beautiful additions to your garden or food forest.

Any way you decide to incorporate pollinator-friendly plants into your garden is a helpful and beautiful endeavor for everyone involved!