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Pollinators Need More Habitat:
Create Some in Your Garden

Yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) collecting pollen from a California poppy (Eschscholzia californica).
Photo ©Robin Mitchell.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
—John Muir

Pollinators are in decline. There are many reasons for the decrease in their numbers, but one of the most significant is habitat loss. Other causes include the introduction of non-native plant species, pesticide use, pollution, diseases, and climate change.

In California, pollinators include bees, wasps, beetles, moths, butterflies, other insects, and hummingbirds. They are necessary for pollinating about 75 percent of food crops, but they also pollinate nearly 90 percent of all flowering plants. Without them, most flowering plants could disappear, to the detriment of entire ecosystems.

The good news is that as gardeners we can create habitat for pollinators, thus helping to restore our local ecosystems and our planet’s health. Gardeners can help make “pollinator pathways,” pesticide-free corridors of native plants that provide nutrition and habitat for pollinating insects and birds. This means treating gardens as ecosystems where living things are interconnected.

In order to provide a place for pollinators to thrive, you’ll need to provide them with a few essentials in your garden:

  • Food, such as nectar and pollen from plants
  • Habitat to raise their young, find shelter from bad weather, and hide from predators, as well as sunny spots undisturbed by pets
  • Water
Yellow-faced bumble bee on a phacelia (Phacelia sp.). Photo ©Robin Mitchell.

Because native pollinators evolved with the native plants in their shared habitat, it is recommended that at least 70 percent of your garden be planted with locally native plants. Locally native plants are adapted to the local soil and climate conditions and are generally low maintenance.

Many of the same plants that support pollinators will also support other beneficial insects, which can help control pest insects in your garden as well as provide pollination services for your food crops.

In late January, this manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) was in full bloom in Orinda, flanked by a toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) and a coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). Manzanitas provide nectar to insects and hummingbirds that overwinter in the East Bay. Photo ©Patricia Kale.
Native bumble bee on a manzanita in El Cerrito in late December. Photo by TJ Gehling (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
An Anna’s hummingbird visits manzanita flowers in the El Cerrito Community Center’s native plant garden in early January.
Photo by TJ Gehling (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Monarch butterfly on a blooming manzanita in El Cerrito in early January. Photo by TJ Gehling (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The following gardening practices will help provide year round habitat for pollinators:

  • Plant for year-round bloom—for example, manzanita species are important for winter-active pollinators because they bloom in December and January when very few other plants are blooming.
  • Include a variety of flower types, sizes, and colors.
  • Mass plants together as much as possible.
  • Plant in sunny, open areas.
  • Learn about and include the larval host plants for the butterflies and moths in your garden.
  • Reduce or remove lawn, which is considered a “desert” in terms of ecosystem services for insects.
  • Avoid pesticides, even the “eco-friendly” ones, so soil, air, and water are free from poisons.

Even though most people think of European honey bees (which are not native to the United States and were brought here by early settlers) as the primary pollinators for agriculture, native bees are also important and can be efficient pollinators of many crops. There are approximately 4,000 native bee species in the United States and 1,600 native bee species in California. About 70 percent of native bee species in the U.S. nest underground. They are non-aggressive and don’t travel far: most have maximum foraging ranges between 500 feet and a half mile.

Sweat bee (Agapostemon sp.) on a buckwheat flower (Eriogonum sp.). Photo by TJ Gehling (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The California Native Plant Society Calscape website is a treasure trove of information about native plants. You can look up locally native plants in your area by typing in your zip code, and you can also filter (using the Advanced Search feature) for plants that attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. When I looked up plants in my zip code (on the Bay side of Contra Costa County) and filtered for bee, butterfly, and hummingbird gardens as well as butterfly host plants, Calscape returned hundreds of results, many of them native to the East Bay.

Here’s a sampling of locally native plants for pollinators in various parts of the East Bay. Many of these plants are available at our CNPS East Bay Chapter’s nonprofit Native Here Nursery:

California fuchsia (Epilobium canum) provides nectar to a number of pollinators, including this Anna’s hummingbird.
Photo by TJ Gehling (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
A tiny bee in the Halictidae family peeks out of a California fuchsia flower, perhaps after finding the nectar at its base.
Photo by JKehoe_Photos (CC BY-ND 2.0).
This large carpenter bee (Xylocopa sp.) can’t fit inside the tubular flower of the California fuchsia or reach the nectary with its tongue, but it still gathers nectar by cutting a hole at the flower’s base. Bypassing a flower’s natural opening and its reproductive parts to gather nectar is called nectar robbing.
Photo by Jack Wolf (CC BY-ND 2.0).

Even if you don’t turn your garden into a pollinator magnet overnight, slowly increasing the number of pollinator plants over time will start to create a healthy ecosystem. Good luck getting started!

Online resources about gardening for pollinators with native plants

Books about native plant gardening and pollinators

  • Bauer, Nancy, The California Wildlife Habitat Garden: How to Attract Bees, Butterflies, Birds, and Other Animals, 2012.
  • Bornstein, Carol, David Fross, Bart O’Brien, California Native Plants for the Garden, 2005.
  • Frankie, Gordon, Robbin W. Thorp, Rollin Coville, Barbara Ertter, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists, 2014.
  • Keator, Glenn, Complete Garden Guide to the Native Perennials of California, 1990.
  • Keator, Glenn, Complete Garden Guide to the Native Shrubs of California, 1994.
  • Keator, Glen, Alrie Middlebrook, Phyllis M. Faber, Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, 2007.
  • Lowry, Judith Larner, Gardening with a Wild Heart, 1999.
  • Schmidt, Marjorie G., Growing California Native Plants, 1980.
  • Schmidt, Marjorie G., Katherine L. Greenberg, Growing California Native Plants, Second Edition, 2012.
  • Smith, M. Nevin, Native Treasures: Gardening with the Native Plants of California, 2006.
  • Tallamy, Douglas W., Bringing Nature Home, 2009.
  • Tallamy, Douglas W., Nature’s Best Hope, 2020.
Coyote mint (Monardella villosa) provides nectar for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds in late spring.
Photo by CountryMouse13 (CC BY 2.0).

—Robin Mitchell, Recording Secretary, CNPS East Bay Chapter

Many thanks to TJ Gehling for making his beautiful photos available under Creative Commons licenses.  —ed.