I've recently become really interested in native bees and butterflies. Both have suffered from declines. There's multiple things attributed to these losses including disease, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the use of pesticides/herbicides. There's other insects that are also in decline as well as birds. I decided I wanted to try to plant more things that would attract native wildlife.


So these are some of the things I've been learning about to help attract native pollinators. I could be wrong about some stuff since I'm still learning but I think these are all probably good things to go by.



- Reduce the use of pesticides.

Pesticides have been found to harm a variety of insects beyond just the pest it's supposed to target.



- Reduce lawn size. This gives you more room for growing plants that help wildlife. You don't have to completely eliminate the lawn but pesticides can harm native wildlife.

I've reduced the size of mine considerably. I'm not sure what I'll be doing for it in the future but for now I added organic garden soil and loosened up parts of the soil. It seemed to really benefit from this. I'm thinking of trying fish emulsion in the future.



- Plant native plants. There's many insects that depend on specific plants. A classic example is the monarch butterfly's reliance upon milkweed for part of their life cycle. Be sure to plant native milkweed and not tropical milkweed.

I'm still learning a lot about native plants. I joined a native plant group for the state I'm in so I could learn more. There's also books on the subject. While I don't think people have to give up all of their exotic plants, I do think just planting even some native plants can help. A good example of this is with the Atala butterfly. It's host plant was over-harvested and the butterfly was thought to be probably extinct. Later on people began to plant the host plant as an ornamental. The butterfly had managed to survive in some small areas of Florida and now with it's host plant abundant again it was able to recover.

My hope is that if planting native plants can become more of a movement that we can see more insects and birds begin to recover with their populations. Of course habitat loss is still the major problem but that makes it all the more important to offer food sources where we can.



- Leave some leaves

Many insects use leaves for habitat. There's many butterfly and moth species in particular that use leaf litter to overwinter in.



- Create nesting sites.

Most native bees live in the ground. Leaving a few areas of bare soil can help them. There's also bees that will make home in plant stems. You can leave some stems for them to nest in or you can even make a bundle of stems as a potential nest for them to use. Trees and shrubs of different sizes can create homes for other wildlife like birds.



-Be wary of box stores.

I've been burned a few times already about "native plants" from box stores. The major problem is that they're often not really native to my own area though they might be native to elsewhere in the state. Another problem has been misidentified plants. For instance I've bought firebush before with it being sold as the native species when it wasn't. It's much better to go to a place that specializes in native plants if possible.




-Learn about invasive plants

Not all exotic plants are invasive but when gardening for wildlife it's good to learn which plants are invasive and to consider removing them.

Interesting Links (Work in Progress)


Monarchs and Milkweed
This is a pdf from the Florida Wildflower Foundation but I think there's information in it useful for those who aren't in Florida as well.

save in case

Don't forget that a lot of caterpillars can't successfully make it to becoming a butterfly because of parasites like tachinid flies. :(

I was reading that less than 10% of monarch eggs that are laid make it to adulthood. This makes it all the more important that there's plenty of habitat to give some of the offspring a chance.

I found a very interesting page on specifically monarchs and tachinids. https://www.monarchlover.org/chrysalide-problems-tachinid-flies/

There's also an interesting link from that page regarding collecting tachinid specimens to be sent to researchers to try to figure out monarch survival rates.

I actually raised well over 50 monarchs this summer and luckily I haven't seen a lot of them taken by parasites

That's great! I don't think I'll be raising any myself but I'll be sure to get milkweed for them out in the garden. I've actually been having trouble finding native milkweed for sale in my area. I've been hearing to avoid the tropical species. There was a native plant sale a county over but by the time I got there they were already sold out of the milkweed. I guess I'll need to try to grow from seed.

I suppose you'll have to do that :(

I saw this article about configurations of milkweed in the garden regarding what's more effective at attracting females and thought you might find it interesting. I have to wait until tomorrow to read it in detail when I'm more alert. I mostly just skimmed it tonight.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2019.00474/full?fbclid=IwAR2MofR7nR9ubEHeDRDGn8QSdlTh1FLgZVFnUZmHNLW5u1v07t9fl6CEczg