Pollination gardens are created with bee friendly plants bees love. Native types of bees and non-bee pollinators such as birds, bats, butterflies, ants, flies, moths and beetles are attracted by the brightly colored, contrasting flowers that open seasonally filled with nectar and pollen for food sources. Bees are not typically attracted to solid red hued flowers. Native perennial plants flowering with yellow, blue, pink, orange, and purple attract the most types of bees. 

Here are the 10 best native plants bees love for pollination:

Aster Purple Dome - late summer to early fall light purple flowering

Blackeyed Susan - mid summer to fall flowering - yellow flowers with black centers

Mondarda Jacob Cline - known as bee balm - summer red flowers

Walkers Low Catmint Nepeta - commonly called catmnt - lavender colored flowers summer to fall (an excellent option to areas where lavender doesn't grow well)

Moonbeam Coreopsis - known as tickseed - light yellow flowers late spring to early fall

Gaillardia Mesa Red - known as blanketflower - deep rusty red flowers summer to early fall

Asclepias tuberosa - known as orange butterfly weed or milkweed - orange flowers late spring/early summer to late summer/early fall

Purple Echinacea - known as coneflower - pink to purple flowers throughout summer

Blue Wild Indigo - baptisia australis - blue lupine like flowers in spring

Salvia May Night - spikey purple flowers early/mid summer to early fall

Click here to read more on how to plant a pollination garden - one of the hottest new gardening ideas!

Neonicotinoid Insecticides

Choose native over hybrid plants for your pollination garden. Plants are hybridized for many different reasons and, as they progress, nectar and pollen are often limited to none in the newer varieties. Select plants that are not grown with the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. Due to TN Dept of Agriculture guidelines (and most other states), nurseries must drench container grown plants or include the dry chemical mixed into the soil before planting. These chemicals are not systemics - so they are not absorbed by the root system into the plants themselves. They are used for topical control for damaging insects in the soil.