Pollinators Thrive on Native Plants

A biodiversity garden is a native plant garden is a pollinator garden! Native plants, such as butterfly milkweed (orange flowers) provide nectar, pollen AND fresh green leaves as food for native pollinators and other native leaf-feeding insects.

If you want to do something to help the plight of insect pollinators in your community, create a native plant garden.  Pollinators thrive on native plants, whereas they do not thrive on non-native, or alien plants.  Most of our garden and landscaping plants are alien species.  Native plants provide ample nectar and pollen for insect pollinators, such as bees, to eat.  Most (not all) alien plants also provide nectar and pollen.  But the key difference between native and alien plants lies in the leaves of the plant.  Insect pollinators such as butterflies (and most all native leaf-feeding insects), can feed only on the leaves of the particular native plants they coevolved with.  The classic example is the monarch butterfly.  The monarch caterpillars can feed only on native milkweeds.  They cannot feed on the leaves of alien plants.  The adult butterfly will take nectar from alien plants, but the caterpillars require native milkweed leaves to survive.  Most of us plant in the spring, but fall is a great time to plant.  If you are wary of native plants, pick just one or two species and try them out.  What are you waiting for?  The time to plant your native pollinator garden is now!