Plants, Pollinators, and Gardening
Are you interested in the relationship between garden flowers and pollinating insects? Or perhaps you want to support pollinators but you are not sure what to plant? Scroll down to access a series of pdf documents giving more information, including recommendations for further reading.
What are Pollinators?
Pollination refers to the transfer of pollen, a dust-like substance, between flowers of the same species.
Some kinds of plants are wind-pollinated, including all the grasses, cereal crops, and various kinds of common trees such as oak, ash and willows.
Plants that are not wind-pollinated use insects transfer pollen between flowers. So when we refer to ‘pollinators’ (in the UK and Ireland) we mean flying insects such as hoverflies, bees, beetles, wasps, butterflies and moths.
Birds are also pollinators, but to a limited extent here compared to many other parts of the world.
Insects & Flowers
Flowers exploit insects to achieve pollination; at the same time insects exploit flowers for food. Insects and flowers are a partnership.
Each insect group has evolved different sets of mouthparts to exploit the food that flowers provide.
Download a pdf document explaining how insects use flowers as a food source (6 pages):
And here is a pdf that explains how different flower shapes are adapted to the feeding habits of different families of insect (6 pages):
Here is a pdf that gives instructions about making ‘bee hotels’ for solitary bees, updated May 2025 (12 pages):
Pollinator Gardens
A pollinator garden is a garden that is planted predominately with flowers that provide nectar or pollen for a wide range of pollinating insects. You can do this whatever style of garden you prefer. You can also plant containers and balconies to attract pollinators.
Download a pdf document listing the key features of a pollinator garden, also listing the best sources of further information about pollinator-friendly gardening (4 pages):
Are ‘native’ plant species essential for pollinators? What does ‘native’ mean? Download a pdf discussion of this confusing topic (6 pages):
Pollinators love culinary herbs (in flower) and they do well in containers. Here is a list (3 pages):
Classic hanging basket and bedding plants are notoriously unsuitable for pollinators; here is a list of varieties that will attract pollinators (2 pages):
I originally created the precursor to this website in 2006, when useful, straightforward information about pollinators, aimed at gardeners, was very hard to find. I now realise that by creating my site I was was something of a pioneer. Nowadays a lot more resources are available. I have retired the original site, but key information from it is preserved in the updated pdf documents that you can download above.
I hope that you find them useful.
All of us gardeners can play our part…
– Marc Carlton
