Plant a pollinator bed

Native flowers for bees and butterflies. Plant it once and it comes back every year.

How big is the bed?

square feet

This fits in a car

About 389 lb of materials. Comfortably inside what a car carries (200 lb), so any shopper can take it.

Before you start

Call 811 before stripping and digging a new bed — it is free and takes a couple of days.

What to buy — untick anything you have

Plants

23 Native perennial, 1 gallon potMix of natives: purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan, bee balm, butterfly weed, aster, little bluestem. Pick things that bloom at different times.

Soil

Tools — already ticked off, since most people have them

Tools

It lands in the shopping form, where you can edit anything and say what you think each thing costs. Nothing is ordered until you send it.

How it goes · about a day · beginner

Choose a sunny spot and strip the grass off it with a spade.
Spread the compost over the bed and fork it into the top few inches.
Set the pots out before planting — tall ones at the back, short ones at the front, three or five of each kind together.
Plant them at the same depth they sat in the pot and water each one in.
Mulch two inches deep between the plants and leave the seed heads standing over winter for the birds.
Skip the bug spray. The bed is for the insects.

Something else

Feeding people instead? The recipe book works the same way — pick a meal, say how many, every ingredient lands on the list.