This spring, design your gardens with pollinators in mind. Here are some tips and tricks to increase the attractiveness of your landscape for pollinators.
Choose Native Plants: 
Pollinators often rely on native plants for food and nesting material. While non-native plants are what you typically find at your local gardening store, they often lack the ability to support a broad range of pollinators. Non-native plants have been selected for their large flowers, vibrant colors, and year-round blooms. These characteristics often come with tradeoffs that can make them less attractive or beneficial to native bees and butterflies.
Native plants, on the other hand, have developed specific, symbiotic relationships with native pollinators and are adapted to provide for their needs. Increasing the presence of native plants in your landscape can reestablish habitat for native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators in your area.
The key to selecting native plants for pollinators is variety. Variety in species, bloom time, flower shape, and flower color will increase the range of pollinators that your landscape can support. To start, select an assortment of native species that bloom from early spring to late fall. Native bees heavily rely on early spring blooms, like woodland ephemerals, so make sure to add in a good selection of native plants that bloom in April and May. Monarch butterflies also rely on native nectar to fuel their fall migration to Mexico in September and October. By providing a consistent source of native blooms from April to October, you can help support both the general pollinator community and monarchs’ annual migration. View ISU’s Monarch Seed Mix for a list of native plants that support pollinators.
It’s also important to include a mixture of native host plants in your pollinator garden. Butterflies rely on specific host plants and often lay their eggs on just one or a few host species. Monarchs, for example, exclusively rely on native milkweed. Other host plants that are important for native butterflies include golden alexanders, native violets, native asters, and native oak trees. The presence of host plants in your pollinator garden is also beneficial for native birds who rely on caterpillars to feed their chicks. For best results, include a mixture of native host and nectar plants in your garden design. Blank Park Zoo and the Tallgrass Prairie Center both provide a list of vendors who sell native plants and seeds.
Design: 
When it comes to designing a pollinator garden, two important considerations are location and layout. When selecting a location, it’s important to assess light availability and soil moisture. Most native prairie plants require 6 hours of sunlight to achieve their best bloom potential, so make sure to choose a spot that is open and sunny. For the more shaded areas of your yard, there are native plants, like woodland ephemerals, that can do well with less sunlight. Make sure you select the right plant for the right place by taking sunlight availability into account when selecting the space for your pollinator garden.
Soil moisture is another important factor to consider. Some native plants can grow in very dry soil while others prefer higher soil moisture. Again, it’s all about selecting the right plant for the right place. Refer back to ISU’s Monarch Seed Mix which identifies the soil preference for each native plant listed.
Once you’ve selected the location, now it’s time to design the layout. For pollinator gardens in urban settings, you generally want to select native plants that don’t grow taller than 3 or 4 feet. While there are many wonderful native prairie plants that can grow up to 6 or 8 feet tall, these species tend to be more difficult to manage in smaller pollinator gardens, so it’s best to stick to shorter species. With that being said, it’s important to place taller native plants towards the back of your garden design and cascade to shorter plants in the front. For circular or island designs, place taller plants in the middle of the planting with shorter species around the edge. Blank Park Zoo offers design templates for those looking for a little inspiration.
Add-ins:
To enhance your native garden for pollinators, there are a few add-ins you can consider. The first is a large rock for basking. Many pollinators will use rocks set in a sunny location to bask, so adding one to your garden can benefit native pollinators. Another important add-in is a source of water. Adding a shallow birdbath or creating a patch of moist soil can provide important water resources for pollinators. Just make sure to refresh the birdbath often to provide clean water.
Besides food, pollinators also rely on native gardens for nesting opportunities. Native bees can especially benefit from a few easy add-ins to increase their nesting opportunities. Ground nesting bees benefit from patches of bare ground that are left open throughout the garden. Cavity nesting bees benefit from the presence of native grasses and bee hotels. Native bees will lay their eggs in the hollow stems of native grasses or use the cavities provided by a bee hotel. By increasing the presence of nesting resources, you can increase the support your pollinator garden provides to native bees.
Maintenance:
The benefit of choosing native plants for your pollinator garden is that after establishment, they generally don’t require much maintenance. Native plants often don’t need supplemental irrigation or fertilization after they’ve become established which can save you time and money while also supporting water conservation efforts. It’s also good to avoid the use of pesticides in or near your pollinator garden as pesticides can negatively impact pollinators and the plants they rely on. To help reduce the presence of weeds, consider adding a layer of mulch around newly planted areas.
Finally, when it comes to maintaining the aesthetics of your garden, start by adding a border around the outside of your plantings. This can give your pollinator garden a more intentional look and increase its attractiveness to your neighbors and community members. When it comes to managing leaf litter and dead plant stems, it’s best to leave those as they are until spring. While many people tidy up their gardens in the fall, it’s better to leave the leaves for the butterflies and bees. A layer of leaf litter can provide insulation for ground nesting bumble bees during the winter, and standing dead plant stems can provide nesting material for other native bees over winter. To support these hibernating pollinators, it’s best to leave leaves and standing dead stems until spring. Once spring temperatures have reached an average of 50° F, feel free to do some spring cleaning and remove any unwanted plant material from your garden. By waiting until spring, you can ensure that it’s warm enough for any emerging pollinators and hopefully some of your spring flowers will already be in bloom.
Hopefully, this month’s blog gave you some good inspiration for your native plantings! Good luck and check back in next month to learn about designing larger pollinator landscapes through prairie establishment and restoration.