Attracting Pollinators to the Garden
Every gardener enjoys watching the birds, bees and butterflies flittering and skittering through their garden. What we must remember is that while they add joy to our gardening experience they are carrying out the very important task of pollinating the flowers for fruit and seed production while gathering their food.
To attract the pollinators to your garden you must incorporate plants native to your area. Here in central Virginia plants such as Baptisia sp., Solidago sp. (goldenrod), Rudbeckia sp. (black-eyed Susan) and Amsonia sp. (blue star) will attract many insects to your garden. Hummingbirds will come looking for tubular flowers such as those found blooming on the vine, Lonicera sempervirens. Gold finches enjoy searching for seeds on the spine heads of Echinacea purpurea while butterflies seek flat topped or umbels blooming on Yarrow (Achillea sp.) and Asclepias sp., (Butterfly weed) pictured here.
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Peggy Singlemann is a regular guest on Virginia Home Grown, and shares expert gardening tips and information either from the beautiful grounds of Maymont or by answering your questions in our studio.
I've got blue-stemmed goldenrod, honeysuckle, and asclepias, but wanted to mention a few showy genera which were, in my opinion, unjustly overlooked. Earliest bloomer of these would be Salvia lyrata - lyre-leaved sage - which is shadetolerant and native, and a potential hummingbird flower just like its showier relatives. Pycnanthemum - mountain mint - turns out to be a significant bee magnet (including honeybees) in my garden, as well as a popular butterfly plant. I grow both P. muticum and P. virginianum, though the latter is easier to use in a small landscape. Asters are another genus which in general attracts honeybees as well as other pollinators, with the additional benefit that a mix of species will provide food from midsummer (big-leaf aster) through to late October or later (wavy-leafed aster). Many gardeners aren't aware that there are shade-tolerant asters, so one needn't have a sunny meadow! If you do have the space, bonesets and snakeroots will attract all the small pollinators, though I seldom see honey- or bumblebees on the huge flower heads. Finally, please your early hummingbirds with beardtongue (Penstemon) species. We have several native species in VA, including gray beardtongue (P. canescens) and foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), which has become popular in its red-leaved form "Husker Red".
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