Our friends at Metro Blooms offer some tips and ideas for supporting pollinators as you plan for spring gardening. Pollinators are essential to keeping our neighborhoods beautiful and livable by pollinating our food, trees, flowers, and other plants.

1. Plant a native plant garden. Gardens with native flowers provide nectar and pollen for our pollinators. Make sure that your garden has diverse plants with staggered bloom times to provide food throughout the growing season.
2. Plant a bee lawn. Bee lawns incorporate low-growing flowers into a turfgrass lawn. Your lawn maintains the function of a traditional lawn, but it provides more food for bees and butterflies.
3. No yard? No problem. Install a planter garden and grow pollinator-friendly plants. You can even include commonly grown vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and squash.
4. Reduce pesticide use. Many common pesticides are toxic to insects, harming or killing them. Weed by hand and use appropriate tools when working in your garden.

Check out Metro Blooms’ Blue Thumb workshops about bee lawns and pollinator gardening at bluethumb.org/events. Blue Thumb is a program of Metro Blooms, a nonprofit that engages communities to create resilient landscapes.