A step-by-step guide to transforming your yard into a thriving habitat for bees and butterflies.
Text and photographs by Anne Readel, April 1, 2025
With climate change accelerating and biodiversity declining, it’s easy to feel powerless. However, just beyond your doorstep lies an opportunity to make a real difference—your yard. Even a small patch of native habitat can provide food and shelter for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators while helping you reconnect with nature.
To help you get started, we spoke with two experts—Judy Cardin, an educator with the Wisconsin Bumble Bee Brigade, and Heather Holm, a pollinator conservationist and award-winning author. Together, they offer practical advice for creating a pollinator garden, and their insights shape every step of this guide.
1. Start small
Creating a pollinator garden doesn’t require tearing up your entire yard. “Start small. Don’t overwhelm yourself,” advises Cardin, who has been transforming her yard one patch at a time. “You can still have turfgrass areas for tossing a ball for your dog or kids to play,” adds Holm.
A five-by-five-foot space is enough to make a difference—and easy to manage for a beginner. When choosing a site, look for areas that are easy to convert, such as foundation beds, fence lines, or even a single strip of lawn.
2. Smother the site
Next, prepare your planting area by sheet mulching with cardboard. It’s affordable, effective, gentle on the soil—and best of all, it requires no digging (your back will thank you!).
Here’s how Cardin does it: Mow the grass short, then lay down a single layer of nonglossy cardboard with all tape removed. Overlap the edges so no grass can sneak through, cover the cardboard with three to four inches of undyed wood chips, weigh it down with rocks or bricks, and water occasionally to aid decomposition.
If you lay cardboard in spring, the site will be ready for planting in fall. If you prepare the site in fall, it’ll be ready to plant in spring.
3. Pick the plants
Now for the fun part: choosing what to plant!
Focus on species that are native to your region and suited to your site’s light and soil conditions—whether it’s clay, sand, or loam. “You're going to have much better success if you're matching the plants that you buy to suit those conditions,” says Holm.
Aim for a mix that bloom from spring through fall to support pollinators throughout the growing season. Plugs (small starter plants) are a great choice for beginners. They establish quickly and outcompete weeds. Seeds work too, but take more time and care.
Feeling overwhelmed? Try a pollinator kit from a native plant nursery or your local Wild Ones chapter. These kits usually include a curated mix of species tailored to your region and site conditions, often with staggered bloom times for season-long support. For design inspirations using native plants, check out the book Prairie Up by Benjamin Vogt.
4. Plant densely
In nature, plants grow close together—and the plants in your pollinator garden should too. Dense planting helps shade out weeds, keeps soil moist, and builds a resilient plant community. “The more densely you plant them, the fewer problems you’ll have with weeds,” says Cardin.
When planting, don’t remove the cardboard—just punch holes through it and tuck your plugs into the soil below. Make each hole a few inches wide so the plant has room to grow. The cardboard will continue to suppress weeds as it naturally breaks down.
5. Skip the sprays
Pesticides—including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides—harm pollinators. That includes mosquito sprays, which can kill pollinators along with mosquitoes!
The good news? Native plants don’t need sprays. As your garden matures, it will attract birds and predatory insects that keep pests in check.
When buying plants, ask whether they’ve been treated with pesticides. Chemicals like neonicotinoids are sometimes applied to nursery stock and can linger in plant tissues for years, harming pollinators long after being applied.
6. Provide shelter, not just food
Pollinators need more than pollen and nectar—they also need safe places to nest and overwinter. Many bees, butterflies, and moths make their homes in the soil, inside hollow stems, or under fallen leaves. “The flowering plants are providing the restaurant … the food,” says Holm, “but we also have to think about where they live.”
That means letting your garden stay a little wild. Skip the fall (and even spring) cleanup, leave stems standing, let the leaves lie, and resist the urge to tidy every corner of your garden. “We have to readjust our views of what is aesthetically pleasing,” says Cardin. “Mother Nature doesn’t have a vacuum and a dust cloth.”
7. Install a sign
Because native gardens often look different from traditional ones, a simple sign can go a long way in keeping things friendly with neighbors. Even a small “Pollinator Habitat” sign signals that your planting is intentional—not neglected—and can help prevent misunderstandings. It might also spark curiosity, start conversations, or even inspire someone on your block to plant their own pollinator garden.
8. Be patient
Don’t expect instant results—native plant gardens take time. It usually takes about three years for them to fully mature and fill in. In the meantime, enjoy watching your garden evolve, with each season bringing new growth and new pollinator visitors.
9. Support science
Even a small garden can contribute to a larger network of pollinator habitat—and to scientific research. “There are all of these extra opportunities to share the cool things that you're finding in your pollinator planting,” says Holm. National programs like iNaturalist, Bumble Bee Watch, Monarch Watch, and regional programs like Wisconsin Bumble Bee Brigade let you log sightings and help researchers track pollinator populations.
While you're helping pollinators, you’re also creating something meaningful for yourself. “There’s nothing that makes me happier than going out into my gorgeous flower garden, full of native plants, full of pollinators and wildlife,” says Cardin. “It provides me with peace and satisfaction that I’ve made a difference.”
Author:
Anne Readel is a photographer, writer, and lawyer with a Ph.D. in conservation biology. Her work has been published by the New York Times, Audubon, and Better Homes & Gardens, among others. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
(Sources: Sierra Club)
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