The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is an official USA Bee Campus
How to create a pollinator-friendly landscape
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Focus on a "healthy" environment, not a perfect landscape.
- Choose plants that provide food and habitat for pollinators.
- Plant a bee lawn. Replace lawn areas that are difficult to mow with shrubs and flowers.
- Adopt best practices in landscape maintenance to improve plant health and eliminate the need for pesticides.
- See our list of recommended trees and shrubs for pollinators.
How pollinator-friendly is your yard and garden right now?
It only takes 5 minutes to complete this survey to find out how your backyard measures up on plants, habitat and gardening practices that help bees and other beneficial insects.
Pollinators help plants that bring us food and other resources. By carrying pollen from one plant to another, pollinators fertilize plants and allow them to make fruit or seeds. Pollinator health is critical to our food system and the diversity of life across the world.
Bees are one of the most well-known pollinators, but there are a variety of other pollinators including ants, flies, beetles, and birds.
Each of us can contribute to pollinator-friendly environments.
- Plant flowers with pollen and nectar.
- Create habitat and nesting sites for pollinators.
- Eliminate the use of pesticides that are dangerous to pollinators.
Resources to help pollinators
Make your yard friendly for pollinators year round
Is your garden and yard pollinator friendly ALL year 'round? Extension Educator Julie Weisenhorn shows you how to adjust your fall cleanup routine to help pollinators through the fall and winter. Make your landscape home to native pollinators. It's smart gardening!
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- Annual flowers that attract pollinators
- Creating a butterfly garden
- Nests for pollinators
- Planting and maintaining a bee lawn
- Planting and maintaining a prairie garden
- Trees and shrubs for pollinators
- Helping bees- University of Minnesota Bee Lab
- Benefits of native grasses
- Bee and pollinator books by Heather Holm
- Pollinators and their habitat - Minnesota Department of Agriculture
- Pollinator Conservation, Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability
- Minnesota's Pollinators - Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
- The Xerces Society
Andrena bee drinks nectar on mustard — Watch an Andrena bee feed on nectar from a mustard plant. (0:44 min.)
Bee lawns with Ian Lane — How to incorporate flowering plants into lawns to give pollinators more forage in the landscape. (6:54 min.)
Bumble bee nest appearance of newborn — Notice the differences between the newborn and the adult bee. (1:15 min.)
Colletes nesting — Watch a Colletes bee excavate a nest. (5:03 min.)
Colletes foraging — Watch a Colletes bee leave the nest to forage and return with pollen. (1:41 min.)
Bee Campus
Find out more
Reviewed in 2024