Sunny Pollinator Garden Design
Garden at a glance:
Sun-loving plants (see list below)
Mix of our most popular short and tall pollinator plants
Attracts huge amounts of monarchs and butterflies
This garden will plant an area from 10ft x 10ft up to 10ft x 15ft
How to design and plant:
This garden has been designed with enough species that no matter where you place the plants, they’ll create complimentary blooms
Mix the grasses and sedges throughout the garden to provide soft textures to balance out the more chunky flower leaves
Plant the shortest flowers near the borders—Pussytoes, Nodding Onion, Jacob’s Ladder, Butterfly Milkweed, and Bradbury’s Monarda
Plant the taller plants in the middle or back of the garden—Blue Wild Indigo, Meadow Blazing Star, Culver’s Root, and Grey Goldenrod
Most plants can be planted 12-15 inches apart, but the Orange Coneflower and Aromatic Aster spread underground so plant them 18-24 inches away from other plants, and the Blue Wild Indigo also becomes a large clump after a few years.
Materials and Supplies:
Plants - you can buy this as a pre-made garden kit or purchase the plants as pots separately. The garden kit is cheaper but the pots are larger, more mature plants.
3” of wood mulch (1 cubic yard, or 14 bags of 2 cubic foot mulch). Wood mulch reduces weeds, reduces watering to just 3-5 times the first year, and nearly doubles plant growth—well worth the extra work (a few hours) and cost (about $40 for a 10ft x 10ft area).
Paper weed-block rolls or cardboard or newspaper to put underneath the mulch. Do not use plastic!
Edging - 5” deep plastic edging or blocks.
Sticks or popsicle sticks to mark the plants. Plastic labels will break over time.
Plants needed:
Flowers:
3 Nodding Onion (Allium cernuum)
3 Prairie Pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta)
3 Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
1 Aromatic Aster (Aster oblongifolius)
1 Blue Wild Indigo (Baptisia australis)
3 Lance Leaf Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata)
3 Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea)
3 Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida)
3 Blanket Flower (Gaillardia aristata)
12 Meadow Blazing Star (Liatris ligulistylis)
3 Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
3 Bradbury's Monarda (Monarda bradburiana)
3 Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans)
3 Orange Coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida)
3 Grey Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis)
3 Culver's Root (Veronicastrum virginicum)
Grasses and Sedges:
9 Star Sedge (Carex radiata)
10 Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
What to expect (A Garden Journal):
We designed this garden with an impactful combination of host plants for pollinator larvae and nectar sources for adult pollinators. It has a really good mix of plant heights to give you a classic cottage garden look if you plant the short plants on the border and the tall plants in the middle or back.
In spring, the Pussytoes will bloom with little white puffs that look like cat feet. Then they’ll start spreading by runners that sprawl slowly across the ground. It is a host plant for American painted lady butterflies, and by mid-summer you will start seeing little web-like “nests” that the black spiky caterpillars make while they eat the leaves.
The sedges will start to re-sprout right when the snow melts. Sedges are like grasses but have triangle stems. Most are cool-season and like to grow when the weather is colder, just like lawn grasses, which is a welcome sight when so many other native plants are still dormant. Star Sedge stays in short clumps and form seed heads in early summer.
In May the Jacob’s Ladder will bloom, with bunches of light blue flowers on soft, ladder-like foliage. It’s an important food source for small early season bees, which are often active on warm spring days. Jacob’s Ladder stays in a clump but you might see small seedlings sprouting nearby in years to come. Bradbury’s Monarda will form a short mound of beautiful purple and dark green leaves which smell like mint. It spreads slowly by underground rhizomes, or roots, after a few years. In late May the flowers will bloom and you might see bumblebees enjoying the pink spotted flowers.
The sprouts of Blue Wild Indigo look like asparagus shoots when they first come out of the ground. It is a legume, a nitrogen-fixer, and helps put nitrogen fertilizer back into the soil. It has deep blue flowers on tall stems but it is a very slow bloomer and might take 2-3 years to bloom and become a mature clump. In the winter, the leaves turn almost black and it looks nice in the snow.
Blanket Flower will bloom throughout the summer. The blooms can have many different colors and patterns, just like a Native American blanket. It can be a short-lived perennial, only living for a few years, but it spreads easily by seed and continues growing in gardens.
June and July provides color throughout the garden. A great color combination is the pink Pale Purple Coneflower and Prairie Clovers next to the yellow Lance Leaf Coreopsis and the orange Butterfly Milkweed. Butterfly Milkweed is a host plant for monarch butterflies. If you notice a monarch in your garden, watch if they land upside-down on a milkweed leaf to lay a single tiny white egg. Birds eat the seeds of Pale Purple Coneflower a few weeks after they bloom. Watch for birds landing on the tops of the cones and pecking away. Lance Leaf Coreopsis is enjoyed by butterflies. It can be a short-lived perennial but it spreads easily by seed.
In late summer, the red Cardinal Flowers and white Culver’s Root will bloom together on tall slender stems. The bright red flowers of Cardinal Flower are a favorite among gardeners and hummingbirds. The nectar is at the bottom of long tubes which is only accessible to long-beaked hummingbirds and long-tongued butterflies. Hummingbirds often visit the flowers at similar times each day—maybe in the morning or before dusk. It’s an incredible sight to see them quickly fly from flower to flower. Culver’s Root is popular with many types of bees and soldier beetles which are important pollinators for native plants.
At the end of summer the Meadow Blazing Stars will bloom and attract dozens of monarchs every day to drink the nectar (we call it the Monarch Magnet!). It’s truly an amazing sight. The Orange Coneflower blooms at the same time, giving a nice complimentary color to the pink Blazing Stars. It spreads by underground rhizomes each year and forms a nice patch.
Nodding Onion blooms around the same time and has pink flowers which are loved by bees. It does have edible onion bulbs but they aren’t very flavorful and too much can cause stomach aches! It spreads easily by seed and the new seedlings look like little grass sprouts.
The tall airy seed heads of Prairie Dropseed grass are a harbinger of fall. Prairie Dropseed forms graceful mounds of soft leaves before sending up seed stems that smell a bit like cilantro in late summer. It’s the most popular native grass.
Finally, in October, the Grey Goldenrod and Aromatic Aster start to bloom. Grey Goldenrod is one of the shortest goldenrods and doesn’t spread very much. Aromatic Aster forms a dense mound that spreads by underground rhizomes about 8 inches a year, so keep it spread out from other plants in the beginning. The light bluish-purple flowers are very important fall nectar and pollen sources for many bees and butterflies when nothing else is blooming. It can survive frosts and we’ve even seen it bloom in Minnesota in November!
Maintenance:
Weeding. The first two years are really important, so try to weed every few weeks and pull out even the tiniest weeds each time. If weeds get too big, their big roots pulls up clumps of large clumps of dirt and it wrecks the mulch layer. Watch for weedy grasses that seem to be spreading underground inches or feet at a time—these are particularly difficult weeds to keep under control (all of the grasses or sedges stay in clumps and don’t spread underground).
Watering. If you used 3 inches of wood mulch, you’ll probably only need to water twice a week for a 4-6 weeks after planting and then never again! But always be sure to watch for wilting leaves. Never water every day, and always check the soil moisture under the mulch with your finger before deciding if they need water or not. We have never needed to water a native plant garden after the first year of establishment!
Trimming. At the end of the year you can leave all of the stems over winter. Birds will continue to eat the seeds of Dotted Blazing Star and Narrow Leaf Coneflower into early winter. Bees and insect larvae overwinter in stems. The foliage provides winter interest as it sticks out of the snow. You can also choose to cut things back or mow everything down in fall or spring. Cutting things down allows more sun to reach the ground and plant crowns, warming things up faster in the spring and making things re-sprout earlier.
Mulching. If you use 3 inches of wood mulch to start and make sure you pull weeds when they are very small so their roots don’t wreck the mulch layer when pulled, you shouldn’t have to mulch again—the wood mulch will stay intact as the native plants mature and spread over the years. As the native plants get bigger, especially the grasses and sedges, their leaves will create a natural mulch layer at the end of each season.