How to Help Pollinators

Plant a Pollinator Garden

While each pollinator has a specific need to support each stage of its lifecycle, they all need high-quality habitat that provides an abundance of flowers, shelter and nesting sites, and protection from pesticides.

  1. Plant Food in the form of abundant flowering plants that provide access to pollen and nectar throughout the growing season Plant Flowers with this Ecoregional Planting Guide

  2. Provide access to shelter and nesting sites including host plants for butterflies like Milkweed for Monarch butterflies or Western Dog Violet for Behrens butterfly, pithy stems and dead wood for cavity-nesting bees, and bare earth for ground-nesting bees. Nesting and Overwintering

  3. Provide access to water: Monarchs need dirty water to satisfy their mineral needs and bees need water to drink

  4. Protection from pesticides that kill non-target insects and degrade habitat by removing or contaminating flowering plants 

Help monitor pollinator populations

  1. Help save Monarch Butterflies:  Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program 

  2. Join a community of naturalists or birders:  iNaturalist , Seek  eBird

  3. Find more community science projects at SciStarter or CitizenScience

Help Monarch Butterflies

  1. Grow native milkweed and nectar plants 

  2. Monarch habitat needs

Help Bumble Bees

  1. Plant Early Blooming Flowers - Plant List from Xerces, Native Seed Directory

  2. Allow Dandelions and Clover to Live Longer in Your Yard - These weeds provide important early blooming resources for bumble bees

  3. Help Your Yard Be Wild - Bumble bees like to nest in hollow logs, spaces in rock walls, under bunch grasses, in birds' nest boxes...etc.  Nesting and Overwintering

  4. Track Bumble Bees -  Join this fun community science tracker  Bumble Bee Watch

  5. Plan for Fall with Food and Habitat Resources - Prepare your site for fall blooms and participate in the Leave the Leaves campaign  

Watch a Ghost in the Making

Take the pollinator protector pledge

Building a habitat garden.