Choosing Your Pollinator Garden Plants

Let's say you've stumbled across someone's plant list and you want to know how to use these plants to create a bed in your yard. Maybe you searched on "Maryland pollinator garden plants" or "butterfly host plants for mid-atlantic" and you found some wonderful plant names, but.. what next?

If you start with the plant names, searching on each one, you can find lots of images and remarks from people and growers about different aspects of the plant. Great! But then, how do you turn all that information into a coherent planting plan for your particular space?

I suggest you narrow your information-gathering to a couple of key characteristics, and put that info into a simple table. It is essential to know if the plant will do well at your site, so first and foremost, put your site conditions on the table: dry/wet, sun/part sun/shade, and if you have extreme clayey or sandy soil, that should also go on your sheet.

Then you need just three more details. The height, so that you know where in the bed to place this plant. And the bloom color and timing. This is particularly important in a pollinator garden because you'll want to be sure that you are providing for pollinators throughout the growing season. I like to show the bloom schedule in columns, so that I can quickly see whether I have any missing months. (You can download my example here.)

As you go through your information-gathering, you will likely find that some plants are not right for you site. This one requires full sun, which you don't have. Or maybe that one needs well-draining soil, and you know that your spot is damp for several days after a rain.

So cross that plant right off your list! Hooray—you just saved yourself the disappointment of planting something and watching it die, fail to bloom, or just never return after a wet winter! I know it's disappointing to learn that you can't plant something that looked so beautiful in a photo or in someone else's garden, but really, it's so much better to focus your effort and money on the plants that are likely to be successful at your site.

Here's the thing: WE HAVE SO MANY BEAUTIFUL NATIVE PLANTS in the Mid-Atlantic to choose from, that you really can find suitable plants if you keep looking! You can create your own table easily on a piece of paper, or if you are comfortable working in excel, here is a template you can download.

Armed with this information, you can move on to the next step of measuring your space and sketching out a diagram of where the plants will go, relative to each other. This design step is much easier and less confusing if you have all the info you need right there on your table, and you've already eliminated the plants that aren't going to work on your site.

I hope this is helpful—I'd love to hear how it goes!

Happy scheming!
—Chris