As far as planning the perfect summer garden goes, even the most novice of gardeners know the basic necessities: sunlight, water, and healthy soil. If you really want your garden to thrive, though, you need to plant the right mix of plants, too.
The best backyards and gardens include a few plants that are known to attract healthy pollinators, like bees, butterflies, and birds. These handy helpers will keep things growing and thriving all season long.
Figuring out the right balance, however, can be extremely tricky. In an effort to remove some of the mystery, we turned to a few experts at American Meadows who kindly shared their top tips for attracting helpful pollinators to your yard this summer.
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One of the best things you can do is understand who your local pollinators are. Then, you can more easily figure out how to attract them. As Kendall Frost, Master Gardener for American Meadows explains, the easiest pollinators to identify are the ones you probably already know: butterflies, honeybees, bumblebees, and hummingbirds.
“There are other pollinators that are a sign of a healthy garden,” Frost says, who says you can also add wasps, moths, flies, beetles, and ants to the list.
Once you’ve identified your pollinators, Megan Foster, Perennial and Bulb Expert for American Meadows, says it’s key to then learn about how pollinating actually works. If that sounds a little too dry for your summer plans, Foster assures us you don’t have to lock yourself inside and read up—you can learn by simply observing your beautiful garden.
“When I see an insect that I haven’t seen before, I enjoy using an app like iNaturalist to ID the animal and learn a little bit about it,” Foste saysr, who recently spotted a
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