Discover the best flowers, plants, and garden designs to attract hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. Create a thriving pollinator garden with native plants.
If you’ve ever bought a “bee hotel” from a garden center. The kind with the cute painted roof and bundles of hollow bamboo. You may have wondered later whether the bees were actually using it, and whether it was doing what the package promised. That quiet uncertainty turns out to be well-founded, and it comes … Read more
A wildlife-safe mosquito control plan using EPA-approved Bti dunks, habitat changes, and a seven-day spring setup that crushes populations before summer peaks — without killing the pollinators you have spent years attracting.
Last spring, a team of plant biologists at Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden wrapped up a seven-year research effort that finally answered a question gardeners have argued about for decades: do the pretty cultivars at your local garden center actually feed pollinators, or are they just ornamental dead ends? The results, published in … Read more
That small mound of dirt near your garden bed isn’t an ant hill. Those tiny holes dotting bare patches of your lawn aren’t random erosion. Chances are, you’re looking at the front door of one of nature’s most overlooked workers. A ground nesting bee. — Emma. Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist, Wild Ones member since 2019, … Read more
If you love the idea of a buzzing, blooming garden but cringe every time something yellow and black flies past your ear, this guide was written specifically for you. Millions of adults over 40 are sitting on beautiful yards they barely use, convinced that inviting pollinators means signing up for painful stings, panicked grandchildren, and … Read more
If you remember monarch butterflies as a common summer sight in your grandmother’s garden, the quiet vanishing of these orange wanderers has probably not escaped your notice. The statistics are sobering: eastern monarch populations have crashed by more than 90% since the 1990s, and the western population has fared even worse, dropping by over 99% … Read more
There is a specific kind of quiet that only gardeners over forty know. The kind where you sit on the porch with a second cup of coffee and actually notice things. A hummingbird is one of those things that demands the noticing. They arrive without warning, hover for three seconds over whatever you’ve planted, and … Read more
There is a quiet moment that happens in every good backyard, usually in the first warm week of spring, when a bird lands on the rim of a birdbath, tilts its head, and decides whether to stay. That small decision is almost entirely in your hands. Choosing a birdbath sounds like one of those simple … Read more
Learning how to attract birds to your yard is one of the most rewarding gardening projects you can undertake. And it turns out the difference between a silent patch of grass and a lively songbird sanctuary comes down to just seven proven strategies. Whether you’re sipping morning coffee and hoping to spot a scarlet cardinal, … Read more
Learning how to attract butterflies to your garden is about far more than picking pretty flowers from a nursery catalog. If you’ve ever planted a dozen nectar-rich blooms, waited patiently all summer, and wondered why only two or three butterflies bothered to visit, you’re not alone. The truth most gardening guides leave out is that … Read more
