11 Flowers That Attract Bees, Butterflies, and Hummingbirds to Your Garden — Seattle’s Favorite Garden Store Since 1924 – Swansons Nursery

Editor’s Note: last updated in July 2022

Our gardens can be precious spaces of quiet, calm, and peace (our neighbor’s zeal for power tools notwithstanding) but they are also places of intense and important activity for the bees, butterflies, birds, and myriad of other insects that rely on gardens for sustenance and shelter.

Stand in the garden and listen to the buzz and whir and whoosh of creatures feeding and resting and socializing. All that activity also provides the essential service of pollination! Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes: bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, and even bats, just to name a few. Knowing which plants serve our pollinators the best and incorporating them into our gardens helps to create a healthy and vibrant ecosystem where flora and fauna thrive.

Here are a few of the many plants with flowers that attract pollinators to your garden. In this post, we’ve focused on perennial flowers for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Because these plants are perennials, they will return year after year, offering a feast for our pollinator friends and beauty for us to enjoy.