Do you want to have a pollinator garden but just don’t have the space for one? Plant a container instead, one that you could move around to sunny spots on your balcony or patio- like a movable feast!

Plant It and They Will Come

We all know how important it is to plant nectar rich plants to create pollinators pockets to provide stopping points for all our native bees and honeybees(non-natives), and other visiting pollinators. Go to Monarch Way Station to see how to set up a complete area if you have the room for a raised bed or garden space. If not, try potting up a variety of perennials and annuals which are known butterfly magnets. For lists of plants specific to your region, I find the best resource is Xerces at The Xerces Society.

Ingredients

For the first pictured container, I used:

Oregano ‘Kent Beauty’ -2

Anise Hyssop ‘Blue Fortune’-2

Anise Hyssop ‘Tango’-1

Blazing Star-1

Yarrow ‘Red Velvet’-1

Butterfly bush ‘Miss Molly’-2

Verbena bonariensis-2

Lantana ‘Samantha’-2

Zinnia-2

Celosia-2

Coleus-1

Pentas-3

To pot up a container efficiently, simply set in your largest plants first, the tall Verbenas and Anise Hyssops,  towards the back of the pot, and fill in with the small and medium ones. My spiller was the Oregano and the Trailing Zinnia which will cascade in a couple of weeks. Planting in a 15 inch container ensured that I could move it around without straining my back and I stuffed 21 plants into it.

To make this possible, I had to shake some of the root ball soil off to make it easier to shoehorn all those plants together. Don’t be afraid to shake the excess soil and even remove some of the roots from the root ball as the plant will quickly make new roots.

To see more plants to plant for pollinators, go to Plant These For the Bees and check out the best methods for planting, such as blocking.