Want to provide pollinator habitat, but you’d also like some flowers for a kitchen bouquet? Don’t want to wait several years for native perennials to become established? 

There’s no doubt that native plants are important for pollinators. Over thousands of years, these plants and the pollinators that frequent their range have become adapted to each other. But that doesn’t mean some of our favorite annuals can’t also help. In fact, many provide blooms for the vase as well as important, much-needed pollinator habitat. Whether looking for a few annuals to pull double duty, or to fill in while native perennials get established, the flowers listed below will do the job nicely.

Pollinators, like us, need to eat

Those butterflies, bumble bees, moths, hummingbirds, and others don’t visit our flowers for a paycheck. They’re looking for lunch. Pollinators visit flowers to find either pollen, nectar, or both depending on their species. Pollen is an important source of protein, and nectar contains useful sugars (carbohydrates). The butterfly may only drink the nectar, but the bee might be enjoying a nectar liquid lunch and bringing home pollen to feed their young. 

Over time, plants and pollinators have formed a mutually beneficial relationship in which each benefits the other. Pollinators visit flowers and are rewarded with food. The flowering plants have their pollen moved from one flower to another, or even from one plant to another. Some pollinators are generalists, feeding on anything they can get (sort of like me), and others are picky eaters, visiting and feeding from only a specific set of plants. It’s those picky eaters that are most in trouble when native plants aren’t available.

A few highly specialized pollinators, like our favorite Monarch butterflies, will feed on many plants but only lay their eggs on one type of plant, in this case, milkweeds. However, that specific host plant requirement for larval feeding is another topic for another day.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to worry about pollinators because they would still have all the habitat they need to thrive. Native plants suited to their needs would grow in abundance. In reality, humans have vastly altered much of the landscape, and many areas are quite sparse in food supplies for pollinators. While native plants are great, non-native plants can still support pollinators by providing food and habitat, especially for generalists. 

In my garden, oregano, which is of course not native to my region, is the largest pollinator magnet. It escaped from its assigned spot and has interspersed with other flowers in the large patch I reserve for native and near-native perennials. Every year, I allow it to flower once I have harvested what I need, and I watch hundreds of bees, flies, wasps, moths, and other pollinators, including hummingbirds, fly right past the blooming echinacea and rudbeckia to visit the oregano. The notion that only natives can serve as pollinator food is simply not true. 

Double-duty annuals

Not all annuals we grow are attractive to pollinators, and not all pollinator-attractive plants make a good bouquet. If you’d like to support the bees and butterflies as well as have a cut flower selection, the annuals below are a great addition to your garden.

University researchers have found differences in cultivars, with some being more attractive to pollinators than others. Here’s your chance to do a bit of local citizen science. Plant several different varieties of the same flower and observe which ones seem to attract the most bees. Super-specialized cultivars with dense flower heads are gorgeous but may be harder for pollinators to access. Keep notes in your garden journal and refine your plantings in the future.

Zinnias

It’s hard to beat zinnias for an easy-to-grow, cut-and-come-again flower. Not only are they perfectly willing to start from seed and available in nearly every color, but with a bit of deadheading they’ll continue blooming from midsummer all the way until frost. 

The zinnias we grow, most commonly Zinnia elegans, are workhorses in the garden and in a bouquet. Simple zinnias work well as filler, and the large, double-blooming varieties can compete with dahlias as show stealers. Every evening in late summer, on my garden walk, I find native bees zonked out for the night, asleep on zinnia blooms. During the day, my zinnia patch is abuzz.

Sunflowers

The sunflowers we commonly grow in the garden are from the Helianthus genus, and while they don’t put forth many blooms, their large flowers and abundant pollen make them a huge attraction for bees and butterflies. It’s common to see half a dozen bees on one sunflower, all happily pollinating as they go about their day’s work. 

For a longer sunflower bloom window, both for your kitchen vase and for the pollinators, plant branching sunflowers or succession plant single-blooming types, sowing them every 10 days or so. 

Important sunflower note: if you are trying to support pollinators, avoid the pollenless or pollen-free sunflower varieties. 

Snapdragons

Most of us grow snapdragons as annuals, even though they are technically a tender perennial. Modern snapdragons have been bred for just about every color, and produce long spikes of flowers that open from the bottom first, over the course of a week or two. But how do the pollinators get at the pollen and nectar?

Plant a patch of snapdragons and grab a chair; you are about to see bees use reverse gear. Bees land on the lower snapdragon petal and then crawl inside, pushing their way into the bloom as if they were spelunking in a cave. Frequently, the bloom snaps shut once they are inside, and the bee disappears. After a few seconds, the entire bloom will wiggle as the bee reverses back out of the bloom, rump first, to fly off to another bloom. 

Salvia

Ornamental salvias are the hands-down favorite of the ruby-throated hummingbirds that visit my garden from spring until early autumn. While these birds love the color red, my dark blue salvias are a favorite target of theirs. They work their way right down an entire flower stalk before buzzing off to the next one. 

Often, another hummingbird interrupts the process (they are very territorial), and an airborne argument breaks out. I can never manage to accurately count the hummingbirds as they flit about, but the salvia is never left alone for more than a few minutes during the day. 

Cosmos

Most cosmos are simple flowers with an open center, making them accessible to a wide variety of pollinators. Cosmos are easy to start from seed, and some of them will even reseed themselves and come back the next year if conditions are favorable. 

I often do what I call chaos seeding: preparing a seedbed, scattering the seeds all over, and then using my hand or a rake to cover them lightly. A little water, and in a week or two there are seedlings everywhere. If there’s a thin spot, I’ll simply move a few from a thicker area. After a month, they’ve filled in nicely.

More Pollinator Support Tips

Just like with native flowers, providing a long bloom window is important. Pollinators need a continuous source of food, not just a feast and then a famine. Many annuals don’t bloom until later in summer, so look for a few, like snapdragons, that will be in flower early in the season.

To help pollinators find your annuals, or your other herbaceous flowering plants for that matter, plant them in clusters or patches instead of as onesie-twosies. The larger swatch of color is easier to find in the landscape, and more efficient for them to visit.

If you have the space, plant a variety of flowers to ensure there is something for every pollinator to use. Butterflies, for example, have a different feeding method than a bumblebee. Tubular-shaped flowers are more attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds with long feeding tubes, while flowers with a big landing pad, like a sunflower or snapdragon, are attractive to larger bees. 

Don’t forget a water source, like a shallow bowl or birdbath with a few stones, and avoid using pesticides. A few munched leaves mean your garden is part of the ecosystem and is providing needed food and habitat.