Provide These Four Elements

  • Water Source

    We all need H2O to survive! make sure there is a water source especially during the hot, dry summer months.

  • Food Sources

    Include a variety of flower shapes, colours and sizes to attract a diversity of pollinators. Bees for example have different tongue lengths and require different flower shape and sizes. Bees like blue, purple, white, and yellow while hummingbirds and butterflies are attracted to reds.

    Choosing flowers with an open center make the flower more accessible to pollinators. Unfortunately, many of the new varieties of extravagant flowers are not accessible to pollinators.

  • Nesting Sites

    While pollen and nectar sources support the adult pollinators, providing adequate nesting sites will promote reproduction. Different pollinators have specific needs. A variety of the following will ensure good habitat: bare soil (for the ground nesting bees), dead wood, hollow stems, or brush piles (for the cavity nesting bees), and specific host plants (for butterflies).

  • Pesticide Free

    Pesticides are meant to kill insects and they don’t know the difference between an aphid and a bee. Use alternative approaches.

Leave the Leaves

The majority of insects overwinter right in your garden. Whether they hibernate in the ground or take shelter in various types of plant material; providing these types of habitats ensures that these beneficial insects thrive and flourish. Plant material includes leaves, brush piles, trees, dead trees, hollow trunks, hollow stems and soil. 

Fall Clean-up

Leaving the leaves doesn’t mean your garden needs to look messy. You can collect all the fallen leaves and place them on your garden beds or around the base of trees to create a leaf mulch. Leaf mulches can suppress weeds, increase moisture retention, and add nutrients to the soil. Avoid shredding the leaves as beneficial insects might have already taken cover in the leaves and/or laid eggs.

Delay your Spring Clean-up

If you want to clean-up the leaves at the beginning of the season make sure to wait until after the beneficial insects have emerged from their overwintering homes. So when is the right time to bring out the rake? Unfortunately, there is no exact date. A good guideline is to do it only if you would be planting your tomatoes outdoors or when nighttime temperatures are above 10 degrees Celsius. 

Plant for the Pollinators:

  • Use Native Plants

  • Plant in Clusters

  • Choose the Right Plants

  • Plant for Continuous Bloom