Pollinators are responsible for almost all the food we eat. Without them we wouldn’t have fresh, sweet blueberries in the summer or warm apple pies in the winter. It is of the utmost importance that we do all we can to protect these pollinators. You can help by avoiding the use of pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides in your yard and garden. You can get the kids involved and build a bee hotel with sticks and leaves where bees can shelter in your garden. You can also plant or support native species. It’s important to protect native plant species in their habitats and, when possible, plant them in your garden to create a pollinator oasis. You’ve likely seen some or all of these native plants around Vermont. Here are a few native plants and their pollinators:

White Trillium Trillium grandiflorum Pollinator: Bees How to grow: It’s better to protect these plants in their native habitats, but you can also purchase tubers online. Blooming in the spring, these flowers are often found in deciduous forests of the North East. It takes white trilliums 7 years from seed to flower. In the first year, only root growth occurs. In the second year, a single seed leaf grows and in the third year true leaves begin to grow. In the sixth year the three whorled leaf patterns will appear and, in another year, or two the first flower will grow.

Red Columbine

Aquilegia Canadensis

Pollinator: Bees, butterflies, hummingbirds

How to grow: You can purchase seeds online.

Blooms in the spring from May to July. This flower is an early meal for hungry hummingbirds in the spring.

Skunk Cabbage

Symplocarpus foretidus

Pollinator: bees and flies

How to grow: Not found in stores, this plant is found naturally in wet, swampy areas. Best practice is to let it grow naturally.

This native plant has a very strong offensive odor that is unpleasant to humans but attracts pollinators. Skunk Cabbage flowers early in the spring.

Common Milkweed

Asclepias syriaca

Pollinator: butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, and beetles.

How to grow: You’ll find this plant naturally

in New England in fields and open spaces. You can also purchase seeds. Blooming in early summer, this plant is known to attract Monarch butterflies.

White baneberry

Actaea pachypoda

Pollinator: beetles

How to grow: You can buy seeds or plants online.

Blooming from May to June, this plant is entirely poisonous to people but attracts

many beetle species to pollinate it.

Purple coneflower

Echinacea purpurea

Pollinator: bees, butterflies, hummingbirds

How to grow: You can buy plants and seeds from your local garden center.

Known as a medicinal plant, echinacea

blooms April through September.

Blue vervain

Verbena hastata

Pollinator: bees

How to grow: You can buy seeds online or harvest them from wild plants in the fall. This plant blooms from July through September. It is highly attractive to bees with many small flowers producing nectar.

Black -eyed Susan

Rudbeckia hirta

Pollinator: bees, flies, wasps, beetles, and moths

How to grow: You can buy seeds and plants at your local garden center or

online. Or, harvest seeds in the fall to plant the following year.

Blooming in early fall, this plant will

easily reseed itself making it extremely low maintenance.

Maximilians sunflower

Helianthus maximiliani

Pollinator: bees and butterflies

How to grow: You can buy seeds online.

Blooming in the fall, this flower is

found in most of the US and Canada.

Heart-leaved aster

Symphyotrichum cordifolium Pollinator: bees and wasps How to grow: You can buy seeds online. This flower grows 4 feet tall and has numerous flowers. It flowers late in the fall in northern climates.