There is great joy in watching a hummingbird, butterfly, or even a happy honey bee visit our garden. While these beauties fill us with wonder, they also perform essential work, pollinating our berry bushes and vegetables. In fact, the wild ones that come to our yards pollinate flowers throughout our surrounding forests and ecosystems. We can help them thrive by growing some of their favorite perennials, which they depend on for food. At the same time, we can enjoy these beautiful flowers too!
Purple Coneflower
Also called Echinacea, this hardy bloomer loves to grow in clusters of fragrant purple flowers. Butterflies and bees love its thick pollen and nectar, which is often so abundant that you can see it on the flower heads. They also make a great medicinal tea that boosts your immune system. While the native variety is purple or lavender, garden hybrids come in a spectrum of yellow, white, apricot, scarlet, and gold. Coneflowers thrive in any sunny spot and tolerate drought conditions.
Milkweed
This incredible native perennial is a mainstay of the Monarch butterfly’s diet. They rely on it for nectar during their long migrations across the continent and as a place to lay their eggs, which become the caterpillars and butterflies of the next generation. The plant also nourishes bees, moths, and hummingbirds. Try growing our native Swamp Milkweed or Butterfly Milkweed. They rise up to four feet, enjoy full sun, and can be planted with lower perennials beneath them.
Yarrow
Butterflies love broad, flat flowers like Yarrow to perch on as they feed, and they like the constant supply of blossoms that the plant provides throughout the summer. It has a soothing scent reminiscent of a forest meadow. In fact, the fragrance is so therapeutic you’ll wish you could taste the honey that the bees make with this flower! Another perennial tolerant to drought, Yarrow loves those sunny, dry spots, where other plants won’t grow. It also makes a hardy addition to the kids’ garden.
'Rhapsody in Blue' Salvia
With a similar color to the beautiful wildflower of the Ozarks, this perennial Salvia grows in tall, bushy stocks loaded with blue blossoms. Its pleasant fragrance beckons pollinators from far and wide. It grows to a height of 25” in full sun, and flowers profusely in early summer.
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Scarlett Lobelia
Closely related to the native Cardinal Flower, the scarlet blossoms of this perennial are even brighter and more profuse. It attracts hummingbirds, who have a special love of anything red. They don’t usually go for the biggest flowers, opting instead for tubular ones like the lobelia, which provides abundant nectar. Besides impressing the birds, it adds life to any perennial border, enjoys sun or partial shade, and blooms from the middle of summer to early fall.
Garden Phlox
Phlox is the Greek word for flame, which refers to the striking blossoms of this bloomer. It is native to the open woodlands of Arkansas and provides excellent nourishment for pollinators from May to October. Gardeners brought this flower into cultivation, and now you can find it in dozens of colors to suit your landscape. Many come in vibrant pastel hues similar to impatiens and sunpatiens. When temperatures are lower in the spring and fall, it can be susceptible to powdery mildew. To prevent this, make sure you water the soil, not the leaves, and thin its foliage to keep the air circulating.
The key to nourishing pollinators is to give them a variety of blossom types and a constant supply of blooming flowers. This ensures that you meet the tastes of our incredible diversity of native bees, butterflies, skippers, moths, and hummingbirds, and ensures they have nourishment throughout the season. If in doubt, imagine yourself as a butterfly. Like us, they are generally attracted to bright, fragrant flowers—and perhaps there is a reason for that. After all, we depend upon pollinators as much as our plants do!
