Plants That Attract Bees and Butterflies

A garden that hums is a garden that works. Planting for bees and butterflies brings constant movement and colour to your yard while quietly boosting fruit set on your citrus and veggies, and this collection gathers the flowering species that pollinators actually visit rather than merely fly past.

The most important design principle for pollinator planting is succession: aim to have something in flower during every month of the year, because a garden that blooms only in spring feeds bees for eight weeks and abandons them for forty four. Australian native nectar plants such as grevilleas, bottlebrushes and banksias are outstanding anchors here, with many flowering through autumn and winter when food is scarcest, while exotic flowering shrubs and perennials carry the summer load. Plant in drifts of three to five of the same species rather than single specimens, since bees forage more efficiently on massed blooms and butterflies use larger colour blocks to locate nectar from a distance. Flower shape matters too, so mix tubular flowers for honeyeaters and long tongued insects with flat, open blooms that suit short tongued native bees, of which Australia has more than 1,700 species.

What you leave out matters as much as what you plant. Skip systemic insecticides entirely in a pollinator garden, tolerate some chewed leaves as evidence the habitat is working, and provide a shallow water dish with pebbles for safe landing. A patch of bare, undisturbed soil in a sunny corner gives ground nesting native bees somewhere to breed, something mulch everywhere gardens accidentally eliminate.

Most heavy flowering pollinator plants perform best with plenty of light, so cross check positions against the plants for full sun collection, and households with dogs and cats can build the same habitat from the plants safe for pets range. To go deeper on the standout native nectar producers, start with our grevillea care guide and banksia care guide.