How to Start a Pollinator Garden (and Why Messy Is Better)
Cindy King is one of the people who got me into this mess.
When I first started working with plants locally and trying to figure out my next step, she was one of my mentors. She told me to get my CPH, so I went and got my CPH. One thing led to another, and we have been getting each other into things ever since.
Cindy is a Certified Professional Horticulturist in Maryland. She consults for The Mill, the family-owned farm, home, and garden retailer based here in Maryland, visiting people's homes to answer questions about planting and pruning, and she runs The Mill's monthly educational series. She has also studied through Longwood Gardens' horticulture program.
And her yard is a certified pollinator haven. The last educational series meeting was a walk through her garden. More than twenty people showed up to look at the plants and, as she put it, the motion.
When she gets home from work, her release is going out to the garden to tinker. That is exactly who you want teaching you about this.
Everything Is a Favorite, as Long as It Is Doing Its Job
I asked Cindy if she had a favorite pollinator. With a gazillion to choose from, she could not pick one.
She has had an elephant mosquito in her garden, a huge mosquito marked in blue and yellow that was nectaring on a flower rather than biting anyone. Flower chafers. All kinds of beetles.
She likes all of them, as long as they are where they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to do. She goes out every day and records something happening.
Right now in one side yard here, there is a cloud of wasps hovering above the grass. They are blue-winged wasps, and they are hunting the grubs that beetles lay in the lawn. My first thought was, I need more of those.
Cindy recently watched a cicada killer snatch a singing cicada straight out of a tree. Think about the aerodynamics of that. A cicada is not a smooth flyer.
Where to Start a Pollinator Garden
Start with what is already there
When Cindy bought her house more than thirty years ago, the first thing she did was pull out the privet, because it is so hard to control.
Then she planted trees and good-sized shrubs first, and built everything else around them.
Give your plants a midday break
Cindy does not love blazing full sun for pollinator plants, especially with how hot summers are now.
Her reasoning: a plant that is struggling in heat does not produce good nectar, because it does not have the moisture to make it. So she aims for four to six hours of sun, morning or late afternoon, with a break in the middle of the day.
Feed the soil
Check your soil and make sure it is good.
Cindy adds a lot of organic matter. She is a big fan of Leafgro. When a bed is not quite up to snuff, she spreads about an inch of it on top in fall. Over winter, the freezing and thawing pulls it down into the ground, and she does not have to do much work at all.
She calls herself a lazy gardener. I would call her a smart one.
Forget the three-five-seven rule
Landscapers often plant in odd numbers, threes, fives, sevens, because it looks more pleasing.
Cindy does not bother. She might have two milkweeds here, one over there, and six somewhere else.
That scattering is deliberate. If one patch gets hit with tussock moth caterpillars or aphids, there is always another plant nearby for the monarchs. And, as she points out, walk into any meadow and you will never find three of anything growing neatly together. Nature is messy, and busy, and that is exactly what she is copying.
Plan for bloom from winter to hard frost
Cindy's yard feeds something almost year round.
It starts with hellebores in winter. They are not native, but pollinators still nectar on them. Then winter bulbs, then spring ephemerals and some harder-to-find woodland plants, then Mertensia and Virginia bluebells, and on through summer.
Asters carry her right into hard frost. And in fall the asters are alive, full of pollinators in a frenzy to feed the young and make sure the queens are ready, because the queens are what will make it through the winter.
Plants and the Butterflies They Host
A pollinator garden is not just about nectar. Many butterflies need a specific host plant for their caterpillars.
Here are the pairings that came up in our conversation:
- Pipevine (Aristolochia) for pipevine swallowtails
- Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) for black swallowtails
- Dill and parsley for black swallowtails
- Pawpaw for zebra swallowtails
- Violets for fritillaries
- Passionflower for fritillaries, which ours have loved this year
- Milkweed for monarchs. Cindy grows thirty to thirty-five plants scattered around her yard
The pipevine that took seven years
This is my favorite story from the whole conversation.
Cindy always thought pipevine swallowtails were beautiful. Pipevine can be hard to find, and it becomes a monster once it is established, so plant it where you want it, because it is not moving.
She found a little bare root plant, planted it, and nurtured it along. It started climbing her fence. Then birds sat on that fence and dropped seeds of non-native bittersweet, which came up right through the pipevine. It took her two years to cut the bittersweet out.
About seven years after planting, she noticed something eating the leaves. While she was standing there looking, a big swallowtail flew right past her. She had pipevine swallowtails.
Now they are everywhere. The vine climbs the fence, reaches up into her oak tree, and has crawled underground to come up in other spots. This year she watched seven pipevine swallowtails lay eggs on it in one ten-minute stretch.
The caterpillars are wonderful too. Little jelly-looking things with red spikes. You look, and you wonder whether to touch.
A word about dill
We planted about fifty feet of dill this year. It smelled good, it was pretty, we dried some, and the swallowtails loved it.
The seed it dropped means I am going to have dill in that spot for years. Cindy has named me the dill queen. I prefer pickle princess.
The Plant Pollinators Visit Most
I asked Cindy which plant in her yard gets the most visits.
Mountain mint. Without hesitation.
It is alive with buckeyes, swallowtails, all kinds of skippers, harvesters, longhorn beetles, solitary wasps, and bees. She thinks part of the reason is that it carries so many small flowers, compared with something like echinacea, which has one big one. The motion around it is constant.
We grow mountain mint here too, with slender mountain mint right beside it. We cut ours as soon as it starts opening, so we never actually see it bloom. The slender mountain mint we let go, and it blooms like crazy. Cindy has convinced me to plant some mountain mint somewhere we are not going to harvest it.
Why You Should Skip Most of Your Fall Cleanup
This was the heart of the conversation.
Leave stems, and even create some
Cindy grows elderberry, and she does something clever with it. She snips the tips off some stems to expose the hollow centers, and a surprising number fill up with small bees sheltering from the weather.
When she prunes it, which you have to because elderberry gets out of hand, she cuts the stems into chunks and lays them around the garden. Pick them up later and many are full of nesting bees.
Chop and drop in March
Cindy barely mulches. In early to mid March, she takes her loppers and hedge shears to her perennials and lets everything fall where it stands. That becomes the mulch.
If a bug is overwintering in a stem, she is sorry, but it had its chance. And she has found that working this way increases the number of insects in her yard every year.
It also feeds the soil. Gardens are not meant to be neat. All of that material is supposed to fall down and break down, and the nutrition goes right back into the ground, so you do not have to fertilize as much. As Cindy puts it, nobody is out there fertilizing the woods.
On our farm, some things have to happen at the end of the season. Dahlias have to come out. But last year we did not make it. It was muddy, it was frozen, and we left 150 feet of dahlias in the ground. They bloomed in June instead of later in the season. Digging them out this year is going to be a job. That is fine. Everything that does not strictly need to be done, sits through the whole winter.
Leave the seed heads
We leave all of our seed heads standing, and the goldfinches come in flocks of thirty or forty and line up on every square of the fence.
The only seed heads I will never leave again are amaranth. It is everywhere.
Cindy shared one more reason to leave milkweed alone. When you cut back old milkweed, let the pods and fluff drop where they are. Hummingbirds use that fluff to line their nests, along with spider silk and lichens. She watched a hummingbird at a Christmas tree farm stretching milkweed fluff out of a fallen stalk and flying off with it.
Let a few weeds be
Cindy does not weed much, and there is a reason.
Weeds and fast growers like buckwheat keep putting out young, tender growth. Many perennials harden off once they flower. When there are some weeds around, insects go for that tender growth instead of your perennials, and you get far more insects overall.
Habitat Beyond Flowers
About ninety percent of Cindy's plants are native, because native plants support the insects that live here. She has some non-natives too. She is a plant geek, and it all works together.
She has also laid driftwood around her yard. Now there are skinks, small snakes, and eastern fence lizards, and dragonflies bask on it in the sun.
Bird baths have been heavily used this year in the heat. Bats have made a comeback around her house. And her yard was full of fireflies this summer. She does not spray anything.
Here on the farm, the difference has been striking. Flycatchers everywhere, hovering and hunting. Bats over the fields. More bird species than we have ever seen.
An Update on Our Buckwheat Experiment
If you read about our buckwheat experiment, here is the first real update.
We split the stripped center block into three sections to see what would happen:
- Barely scratched the surface with a rototiller. A carpet of buckwheat. Beautiful, thick, and it has choked out everything else.
- Ran a cultivator only. Thinner. I do not think the seed got as good soil contact, but it is still working. A few celosia seedlings and some amaranth came through.
- Did nothing. The spottiest by far, which makes sense. I watched the birds come in and help themselves to the seed.
The pollinators on it have been incredible. It does smell strange, which I was not expecting at all.
Next, we crimp it, put compost down, and plant straight into it.
I also saw a dahlia grower who sows buckwheat between her dahlia rows to choke out weeds. I love that idea.
And Then There Are the Quail
The buckwheat did something I did not expect. It turned out to be quail habitat.
Three bobwhite quail have been here for over a month. They dust bathe in the buckwheat, run through the flowers, hop up into trees and scold us. Somebody sees them doing something almost every day.
They are also very friendly. They will let us within five to ten feet. Cindy and I both think that means they were probably released somewhere nearby, because wild quail would be long gone. Cindy's mom once had quail nest near her house, and it turned out a neighbor half a mile away had some get loose.
I am okay with it. It is a little like having chickens again. And I keep looking at the sky telling the eagles that I love them, but please leave the quail alone.
Cindy explained how quail rest at night in a covey: a tight group on the ground, with the outer birds facing out and the rest clustered inside. I have not found where ours roost yet, and I am not going looking, because I do not want to disturb them.
Get Comfortable With Bugs
It bothers both of us how bug phobic people have become.
With the grandkids, I have been handing them bugs. Here is a moth. Hold it. Let it crawl up your arm. It is okay. With the garden orb weavers, we look and do not touch. You have to learn which is which.
Cindy is not a spider lover either, but when she can, she catches them and moves them, because they do so much good.
And when a plant pops up somewhere she did not put it, her first instinct is to move it. Then she stops and thinks, it came up there for a reason. She leaves it and sees what happens. That is how things spread around her yard, and it is a big part of why it works.
If you really take the time to watch, you see the most amazing things.
We are still stumped on one thing: a bumblebee lookalike that is larger, flatter, and more brown than yellow. Cindy's beekeeper friend thinks it might be a fly that mimics a bumblebee. If you know what it is, tell me in the comments.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start a pollinator garden?
Start by removing invasive plants such as privet, then plant trees and good-sized shrubs as your structure. Check your soil and add organic matter. Choose mostly native plants, scatter them rather than planting in tidy groups, and plan for something blooming from late winter through hard frost. Include host plants for caterpillars, not just nectar flowers.
How much sun does a pollinator garden need?
Many pollinator plants do well with four to six hours of sun. In hot climates, a break from midday sun can help, because heat-stressed plants produce less nectar.
What plant attracts the most pollinators?
In Cindy King's garden, mountain mint is the most visited plant by far, drawing butterflies, skippers, bees, wasps, and beetles. Its many small flowers keep a steady stream of insects coming.
What are host plants for swallowtail butterflies?
Pipevine (Aristolochia) hosts pipevine swallowtails. Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), dill, and parsley host black swallowtails. Pawpaw hosts zebra swallowtails.
Should I clean up my garden in the fall?
Leave most of it standing. Hollow stems shelter overwintering bees, seed heads feed birds, and fallen leaves and plant material break down to feed the soil. In early to mid spring, cut perennials back and let the material fall where it is as mulch.
Should I cut back milkweed?
If you cut it back, let the pods and fluff fall where they are. Hummingbirds use milkweed fluff to line their nests.
What plants host fritillary butterflies?
Violets and passionflower are both host plants for fritillaries. Violets also make an excellent weed-suppressing ground cover in flower beds.
