Long Season Pollinator Plants

Many gardeners love helping pollinators. But growing a pollinator garden isn't practical in every location. For small space gardeners, the solution is to work pollinator plants into existing gardens and select varieties that stay compact and are easy to manage. Before I talk about compact pollinator plants, though, let's consider other factors that help you create a bee, butterfly, and insect-friendly habitat in your yard.

Pollinators need shelter, nesting spots and water along with pollen and nectar from flowers. Have a water source, such as a bird bath, in your yard. Create a small, seldom mowed, mini meadow area on the edge of your property where wild plants and grasses can grow and pollinators can hide. Leave a snag tree and fallen logs as nesting sites for some pollinators. Many native pollinators are solitary and live in the ground, including your lawn. Mow high and avoid using pesticides to protect these important native bees.

For plants, have pollinator friendly plants blooming from spring through fall. You don't have to remove existing plants, just supplement with compact, pollinator friendly ones.

In spring, start with early flowering bulbs, such as scilla and winter aconites, followed by spring perennials. 'Pink Diamonds' (1) is a pink flowered bleeding heart (Dicentra) with attractive, cut leaves on a compact, 16 inch tall. Our hellebores are always popular with bees. 'Honeymoon^® Irish Luck' (2) is a striking, single-petaled variety with green and yellow coloring. Plant hellebores where they're shaded in the afternoon. 'Mini Gallery^™ Blue Bicolor' (3) is a blue-colored lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) that grows best in light, slightly acidic soils. It has early flowering, bi-colored blue and white blooms and only grows 16 inches tall. And don't forget shrubs. 'Low Scape Mound^®' (4) Aronia melanocarpa is a native, two-foot-tall, heat- and drought-tolerant variety with attractive black berries and great fall foliage color.

Come summer the plant palette expands. 'Midnight Masquerade' penstemon (5) features deep purple leaves with purple flowers on drought and salt-tolerant plants. This tall, clumping perennial doesn't spread quickly. In summer, sunflowers are loaded with bees, so why not grow a compact, perennial selection? 'Tuscan Sun' heliopsis (6) is a hardy to zone 3 nativar. It grows only 2- to 3 feet tall, blooms long, and is disease- and drought-tolerant. Of course, everyone is familiar with growing milkweed for Monarch butterflies. But other pollinators like it, too. Swamp milkweed is a good selection that spreads less aggressively than common milkweed. 'Ice Ballet' Swamp milkweed (7) (Asclepias incarnata) grows 3- to 4-feet tall with attractive white flowers and thrives in full sun or part shade. For a small shrub, try potentilla. 'Happy Face^® Pink Paradise' (8) has unusual pink-colored, semi-double blooms that last most of the summer. This compact potentilla grows in part sun and is drought and salt-tolerant.

Finish the season with some pollinator favorites that will help these insects overwinter. Solidago 'Dansolitlem' Little Lemon' (9) is a dwarf goldenrod growing only 18 inches tall with lemon colored blooms. Cut back the first blooms after flowering to stimulate a second bloom. Nothing brightens up a landscape like black eyed Susan. 'Mega Millions^®' Rudbeckia fulgida (10) is disease resistant, heat tolerant and keeps cranking out flowers from late summer through fall. 'Rockin Round^®Superstar' (11) sedum is an upright selection with dark purple foliage and rosy pink flowers on a tough, compact plant that withstands drought, heat and salt.

After the bloom season ends, leave the dead stems and foliage in fall for overwintering sites for pollinators and clean up the gardens in spring.