Create, enhance,
​and connect habitat

Plants & pollinators have been
​collaborating for millions of years.
If you plant a wide diversity of native plants,
​a wide diversity of pollinators will come.
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Header photo by: Kim Bailey

Before you get started

Before you get started on the specifics of sourcing your native plant list and finding a local nursery, assess what’s good about a landscape (small or large) and what can be improved.

• Is there a rich diversity of locally native plants?
• Are there natural, undisturbed areas where pollinators can nest in the ground or in dead trees or plant stems?
• Is there a water supply?
• Are harmful insecticides, fungicides or herbicides being used in the area or near the area targeted?
• Are there undesirable exotic invasive plants?
  
• Whatever the case, build on what you have before eliminating all plant life and starting over.

​Creating a pollinator playground

• ​Gradually replace exotic, and/or non-native invasive plants with natives. 
• Avoid pesticide use and source plants from nurseries that do not treat plants with neonicotinoid pesticides, which permeate the entire plant and remain active for as much as years. (Some stores label their plants "bee-friendly" even though they were grown from plants treated with "neonics.")
• Provide a continuous succession of flowers from spring to fall to avert famine for pollinators. 
• Plant larval host plants for butterflies and moths. 
• Leave undisturbed areas for nesting sites--ground nests and otherwise. 
• Provide a clean water source nearby. 

If you want to make 
honey bees really happy, 
(introduced by European colonists)
plant one flower species 
in 3' circular-ish masses
so that honey bees flying at
15 miles / hour  will notice them
and can forage  among them efficiently.

Key terminology

​“Native” can mean many things to different people, so here are some key terms when referring to pollinator habitat:

Native

A species that existed prior to European settlement of the Americas.  

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Ecotype

A native species found in a defined area, state or region. 

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Naturalized

A species not native to a certain area that grows, reproduces and maintains itself without interference. 

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Variety

A subdivision of a species having a distinct, consistent, though often inconspicuous difference.

Definitions from Ernst Seeds

Step 1: Which plants are
​pollinator-friendly in my region?

The best way to start custom pollinator-friendly plant list is by downloading a free planting guide for your ecoregion from The Pollinator Partnership.

Ecogregional Planting Guides

The Xerces Society offers helpful, but less detailed, lists by region that have more common plants. In both cases, the regions are fairly large, so a particular species may not actually be native to your specific area.

Pollinator-Friendly Plant Lists

The Audubon Society offers an excellent native plant search tool, searchable by zip code. For maximum benefit, choose "Full List" and note whether the plant provides nectar and supports hummingbirds and butterflies, as well as moth caterpillars. The National Wildlife Federation offers a native plant finder, searchable by zip code, as well.  Unlike the Audubon Society's program, NWF allows you to save the plants to a helpful list, but unfortunately, they don't offer a "select all" option.

The Pollinator Partnership also has a
free phone app ("Bee Smart") to help
you when you're at the nursery.
​Their guides list strictly native plants and
are rich with details – common name,
​scientific name, bloom time, height, bloom color, cultural needs (moisture, sun).

Step 2: Which plants
are ​native to my county?

There are some excellent websites for further localizing your list (verifying a species is local to your county or adding other species not on the Pollinator Partnership or Xerces lists). You can search by common or scientific plant names. As a reference tool, you should start with the "Advance Search" option on the USDA online Plants database. As filters, choose your state, then your county, then "native,” to generate a list of all [documented] plants native to your county. Download the list into a word processing or spreadsheet document for safekeeping.  If you'd like to make notations about plants in the future, a spreadsheet format is probably best, to allow sorting by various filters. For example, you might like to sort the plants by their bloom time. Now, whenever you consider any plant, you can refer to this list to determine whether it is truly native to your county. (Granted, these lists are probably not exhaustive.)

Visit USDA Website

To search for a specific plant, indicate whether you are searching by common name or scientific name. The USDA site provides everything from photos to synonym names to plant fact sheets that describe hardiness zones. Plant names are spelled in several ways, so try changing the spelling a bit if your plant doesn’t show results.  (For example, Joe-pye weed got no results, but Joe pye weed did.) If you search "buttonbush" (common name) in North Carolina, you can scroll down below the map of the US showing its distribution area, and learn where it is native. It indicates that the common buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is native throughout the eastern United States and Canada, while another species of the same genus, Mexican buttonbush, is only native to Texas. If you click on "native species" (link is below the US map), you can click on your state to see which counties the plant is native to, and discover that the common buttonbush is, in fact, not native to every county in every state for which it is listed as native.

NatureServe also has a helpful database. There you can look up a species and find its ecological association with other plants. 

Visit NatureServe Website

Another great site, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center even tells you about plants’ pollinators and lets you filter lists by bloom month. The "Wildflower" name is a misnomer as they also cover shrubs and trees. In addition to lists recommended for each state (with no preference for pollinator-friendliness), under their "Recommended Species List" link, you'll find links to ready-made lists provided by the Xerces Society highlighting plants of special value to native bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and butterflies and moths. However, they are not specific to a location.

Most states have universities and/or native plant societies that study native flora, and they, too, have helpful websites.

Step 3: What will 
​thrive in my flower bed?

Now that you have your list of native plants in your region, you can begin to create a shortlist of what plants will thrive in your specific location. Depending on the sun and moisture availability and actual space limitations, you can narrow the list to which perennials, shrubs and trees might work where you want to plant them – i.e. in backyards, in downtown sidewalk strips, along roadways, in a park. Access to water, sun exposure, and frequency of planting or bloom periods are all factors that should be considered. This is when setting up your list as a spreadsheet with appropriate columns can make customizing fairly easy by sorting and resorting the list to easily spot the plants that should grow well in a given situation.

Access to water,
​sun exposure, and frequency of planting or bloom periods are all factors that should be considered. ​

Step 4: Where can I ​buy these plants?

If you don't want to order plants online, determine whether the plants or seeds are available for purchase nearby by contacting native nurseries.  You can find lists of native nurseries near you on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website or on your state's native plant society website, or by doing a web search for native plant nurseries in your state. If you can’t find a particular species, revisit your county’s USDA Plants list to find other species in that genus that are native to your location, then search for more information about that plant(s) on the USDA or Labybird Johnson sites to determine if you have a good substitute

Work with your local nuseries

Talking to your local suppliers is best to ensure your plan is not only feasible, but also the most sustainable based on local product supply.

• Contact local nurseries in your region by phone or email to ensure the plants you’re searching for are available for purchase.
• ​Ask the nurseries to suggest any alternate species they carry based on your requirements and research thus far.