Wildlife

When I stepped outside this morning, our yard was abuzz – literally – with activity. Bumble bees, wasps, butterflies and moths hovered over the plentiful flowers. Pollinator paradise.

Summer is the time of plenty for native pollinators. And they’re binging.

But creating pollinator habitat in your yard or garden means more than summer blooms.

Think of summer as the pollinator’s Thansksgiving dinner. There’s lots of food, easily accessible.

But also consider this: When you sit down to a holiday meal with all the fixings, you might be so stuffed you can’t think of food. You might even say “I’ll never eat again!”

The next day comes, though, and you do indeed eat again. Even multiple plates of turkey and the fixings are not enough to fuel you for a year. It’s the same with bumble bees and other pollinators: Summer flowers are great, but they are not enough to sustain healthy pollinator populations.

Fortunately, it’s not difficult to create a pollinator paradise. This is a conservation initiative where you can create important habitat with just a small strip of plants in your backyard or garden or back porch (even one pot of flowering plants can create vital habitat).

How do you ensure that pollinators have healthy food, a place to nest and livable conditions?

Here are five tips to get you started, with thanks to The Xerces Society, an organization devoted to invertebrate conservation that has much more incredibly useful information on creating pollinator habitat in yards, farms, roadsides and even golf courses.