YEAR-ROUND · 7 MIN READ
A pollinator garden that works in zone 5
Bloom from April to October, using plants that will still be alive in five years.
The mistake in most pollinator plantings is that everything flowers in July. Bees are active from the first warm day in April to the last in October, and the gaps at either end are where gardens fail them.
For April and May you need woody plants, because there is not much herbaceous material up yet. Serviceberry, willow, and any of the native currants. A flowering serviceberry in early May is loud with bees from a distance.
June to August looks after itself: coneflower, bee balm, anise hyssop, catmint, milkweed. Choose straight species or near-species cultivars — a lot of heavily bred double-flowered varieties have no accessible pollen at all.
September and October are the second gap and the one people forget. Sedum, asters and goldenrod carry it. Goldenrod does not cause hay fever — that is ragweed, flowering at the same time — and it is one of the most valuable late plants there is.
Plant in groups of at least three, ideally five. A single plant of nine different things is much less use than five plants of three things; pollinators forage efficiently and want a patch worth landing on.
Leave some bare, undisturbed ground. Around seventy per cent of our native bees nest in soil, not hives, and cannot use a bee hotel. A sunny patch of un-mulched earth is doing more than most bought interventions.
And stop deadheading everything in September. The seed is the point.
Written for zone 5 in Simcoe County. If you garden somewhere colder, on sand, or in a frost pocket, come and ask — the answer changes.