I usually plant a lot of zinnias to attract pollinators to my summer garden, but this year, I planted a wide variety of plants, including black-eyed susan, cosmos, purple coneflower, anise hyssop, lemon balm, bee balm, and mexican sunflower. Even though I read about mexican sunflower which is loved by a lot of pollinators and birds, I didn’t realize how true it was.
I purchased the Mexican sunflower, red torch seeds from Baker Creek Rare Seeds. Three seeds were direct sown in one of the raised beds in mid-April. They were fairly slow to start. We also had cooler weather until mid-June with a higher amount of precipitation this year in Georgia, so that didn’t help. However, once the heat kicked in in the latter part of June, they started to grow very quickly, and by the beginning of July, they were 8 feet tall with lots of reddish-orange flowers!
There have been carpenter bees, honeybees, bumble bees, other smaller bees, hummingbirds, gold finches, swallowtail butterflies, gulf fritillary butterflies, and others all over this plant. It is so fun to stay still and watch what’s happening in this area. Lots of activities just around this plant! They go to the zinnia patch occasionally, but their favorite is the Mexican sunflower.
This plant gets tall and wide, so it is recommended to plant it where there are plenty of room. I planted them at the center of the 8′ x 4′ raised bed, and it is almost taking the entire bed. However, it is very well worth planting it to attract a lot of pollinators. It is also carefree, too. Except planting them in the ground and giving a bit of fertilizer at the beginning, I didn’t do much at all.
This will be one of the plants I will be planting every year. If you want a lot of pollinators in your garden, I highly recommend planting mexican sunflowers!
This is the aerial view of my fenced-in garden. It is hard to see with all these greens, but you can see the Mexican sunflowers in the second from the right, at the bottom row (with all the orange dots). There are turmeric and artichoke planted in the same bed, but you don’t see them in the photo above.
Even though there are a lot of activities in my garden, I have seen much fewer butterflies this year. There are usually many swallowtail caterpillars on dill and parsley, and gulf fritillary caterpillars on passion fruit vines. I saw just one! The weather was a bit off this year, and it may be impacting butterflies in some ways. Now it is in late July, I started to see them more regularly. I am still waiting for monarch butterflies. There is a small patch of milkweed in the back, but I haven’t seen any there.
What type of pollinators do you see in your garden? Do you see the same level of activity this year compared to previous years? Please let me know in the comments below.
Happy gardening!