A common pitfall in the current gardening-for-nature trend is the dreaded late-summer “pollinator gap.”
This is when gardeners who are trying to help pollinators load the yard with flowers that bloom in spring and early summer but inadvertently overlook that August/September stretch before the fall bloomers kick in.
Pollinator advocates stress that it’s important to plan for at least a few pollinator-friendly choices at all times so there is season-long, nonstop food for the birds, bees, and beneficial bugs.
Bees can’t take a week off feeding, they remind.
Research from Dr. Doug Sponsler at Penn State University’s Center for Pollinator Research found that July and August are prime months when the pollinator pickings get a bit slim in Pennsylvania yards.
May and June, on the other hand, are bountiful months since so many trees, shrubs, and perennials naturally bloom in that time frame.
Sponsler says gardeners can help the pollinator cause by purposely planting a variety of bloomers that fill that mid- to late-summer gap.
Some of the best late-summer native perennials are clustered mountain mint, Joe Pye weed, goldenrod, anise hyssop or hummingbird mint (Agastache), sneezeweed, tall garden phlox, coreopsis, monarda (both the beebalm and wild bergamot types), perennial sunflowers, false sunflowers (Heliopsis), milkweeds, black-eyed susan, purple coneflower, and as summer winds down, asters and turtlehead.
Three native flowering shrubs that bloom in July and August are summersweet (Clethra), New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus), and American beautyberry.
Several non-native perennials are attractive to pollinators as well, such as lavender, sedum, and Russian sage, while many annual flowers bloom continuously throughout summer, including alyssum, dahlias, cosmos, zinnias, lantana, pentas, and annual sunflowers and salvia.
Other Penn State research suggests that pollinators prefer blooms that have clusters made up of lots of small flowers and perennials that are planted in groups of at least three to five plants each.
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