Habitat and Landscape

Pollinator habitat is an area that includes a variety of flowering plants. These plants provide food and nesting space for pollinators. It can be natural, such as a meadow, or manmade, such as a pollinator garden. In this section, you’ll find lots of information to help you make your own pollinator garden, including what plants to include and how to attract bees and other beneficial insects.

How to Make a Pollinator Garden

Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes. Pollinator species include not only spring bees and bumble bees. They also include flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, bats, and hummingbirds.

In order to have a thriving population, pollinators need food, water, shelter, and space. In a pollinator garden, for example, there will be a combination of flowering plants that have been specifically cultivated to provide nesting space and nutrition for pollinators. A pollinator-friendly garden should contain plants that provide pollen and nectar, all year round.

If you want to create a pollinator garden, traditional ornamental gardening techniques won’t work. Certain plants are better than others. Water and shelter should be provided. If you want a pollinator garden, it’s also crucial to understand how best to clean up in the fall and provide a suitable habitat for the pollinators that overwinter there.

It’s possible to certify your pollinator garden. The Pollinator-Friendly Garden Certification Program started in 2011. The program aims to encourage homeowners to explore gardening for pollinators as a new hobby and improve their property.

The Penn State Master Gardener Program also guides gardeners and homeowners on the best flower varieties to include in their pollinator gardens.

Choosing Bee-Friendly Plants

Learning about bees, their habitats, and what plants help them thrive is critical for the future of mankind. More than 180,000 species of flowering plants rely on insects, birds, butterflies, and mammals for pollination.

Pollinators are responsible for one-third of what we eat every day, but their populations are declining. This is why it’s important we all do we can, and planting for pollinators has a key role to play. Some of the best plants for pollinators include:

• Solidago rigida - stiff goldenrod
• Pycnanthemum muticum - clustered mountain mint
• Eupatorium perfoliatum - boneset
• Euthrochium dubium - coastal plain Joe Pye weed
• Asclepias incarnata - swamp milkweed
• Cercis canadensis - Eastern redbud

Perennials with a long-blooming season are also suitable for attracting pollinators. Many of the flowers you choose to plant in your pollinator garden will have evolved to benefit from pollinators such as butterflies. Flowers play a fundamental role in creating a diverse pollinator garden.

Attracting Bees and Pollinators to Your Plot

Wild bees and other pollinators are essential if you want to ensure viable crops of beans, tomatoes, squash, and lots of other fruit and vegetables in your plot. Pollinators also have an important role to play in the herb garden.

It’s quite easy to draw them in during the growing season because of the fruit and vegetable flowers. But what about the rest of the year? Providing food for pollinators – such as bees and wasps – can be tricky, but the key is to grow a broader range of plants in the area and landscape to attract and conserve beneficial insects. That way, you can offer them year-round pollen and nectar. It’s also vital to provide nest sites and nesting material.

You can expect a wide range of pollinators to visit your plot, such as honey bees, mason bees, and wild bees. Mason bees play a key role in orchard pollination, but they’re also very beneficial in the home garden.

Bees aren’t the only creatures you should be attracting to your plot. There are lots of other beneficial insects. Flies in the family Syrphidae, for example, are very beneficial insects to have in the garden, greenhouse, or nursery.

As well as attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects to your garden plot, you should also be careful with the pest management methods you use. If you use flowering cover crops, it is great for native pollinating bee conservation. The use of pesticides, however, can affect pollinator health.