Good morning Brie! One thing that may have been worth mentioning is that for most butterflies and moths native plants are necessary to complete their life cycle. Providing nectar and pollen for pollinators is obviously a must but it is only one of the life stages. For the others one must have a diversity of native plants that are host plants. I too have some nonnnative pollinators including phlox,Zinnias and sages/salvias as they do indeed attract pollinators in our heavily , but not solely, native gardens. In the past you have mentioned the importance of having a diversity of host plants. Just didn’t hear u mention it this time and thought I’d chime in! Thanks for your great channel.
Yes, zinnias are butterfly magnets. I avoided planting them years ago, but the past few seasons they have been amazing. Monarda, echinacea, and salvias are also drawing the pollinators to my garden.
It is really interesting but I did not notice almost any activity on zinnias in my garden. I wonder if there are different types of zinnias. The plants that are non-native and are popular in my garden are seed dahlias and marigolds (single).
We had bees up to three weeks ago and now we have very few in the garden. There have been no butterflies so far this year. We have plenty of plants for pollinators so we don't know what is wrong, hopefully they come back because a garden is not a garden without pollinators.
