Fall Pollinator Garden: 6 Easy Ways to Help Bees and Monarchs Before Winter
Right now, somewhere above your street, monarch butterflies are heading south. Some will fly more than 2,000 miles before they stop, which is a lot of flying for something that weighs less than a paperclip.
They are not looking for a nature reserve. They are looking for a flower. Yours will do just fine, and it still counts if yours is one pot on a windowsill.
Late summer into fall is the busiest stretch of the whole pollinator year. Bees are packing away the last of the season's food and butterflies are fueling up for a very long trip. The nice part, for us, is that helping mostly means doing less rather than more.
Six easy things below, and you are allowed to stop after one.
When the monarchs come through your area
The migration rolls south like a wave, arriving a couple of weeks later for every few hundred miles. Monarch Watch has mapped the timing. Here is the friendly version.
| Where you are | When they usually come through |
|---|---|
| Upper Midwest and northern New England: Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, northern Michigan, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine | Late August into the first days of September |
| Great Lakes, Northeast and northern mid-Atlantic: Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, southern Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and southern New England | The first three weeks of September |
| Lower Midwest and mid-Atlantic: Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware | Mid to late September |
| Mid-South and southern plains: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, northern Georgia, northern Texas, New Mexico | Late September into early October |
| Deep South and central Texas: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, central Georgia, the Florida panhandle, Austin and Waco | Early to mid October |
| Gulf Coast and south Texas: Houston, San Antonio, Laredo, the Rio Grande Valley, coastal Louisiana | Mid October into the first days of November |
| West of the Rockies: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, plus Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, which sit on the divide and send butterflies both ways | September into October, and these are a different crowd. Western monarchs skip Mexico and spend the winter on the California coast. The same flowers help. |
Weather shoves all of this around. A warm spell speeds the wave up and a cold front can stall it for days, so treat your row as a rough window rather than a date to circle.
Nothing in bloom at your place right now? Completely fine, and number 3 below is written for you. The monarchs come through every single year, so anything you start now is next year's fuel stop.
1. Put the pruners down
The easiest win in gardening, because the work is zero.
Those last faded flowers on your coneflowers, zinnias, cosmos and marigolds are still lunch. Leave them on the plant and the bees keep coming back. Leave them longer and they turn into seed heads, which is free bird food all winter.
So the fall version of snipping off spent blooms is: don't. Let the whole thing go a little shaggy. It looks wilder, it feeds more, and it is less work than the alternative.
Still feel like puttering? Sweep the path. The flowers have got this.
2. Plant the fall power couple: asters and black-eyed Susans
If you add two things to a pollinator patch, make it these.
Asters are the last call of the season. They open when almost nothing else does, in the purples and pinks butterflies spot from a distance, and they are one of the most dependable late-season meals for monarchs on the move.
Black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers do the long shift. They bloom from midsummer through the first frost, and their seed heads keep feeding birds all winter if you leave them standing.
Sow them now and they spend the fall doing quiet root work underground, then come up swinging next summer, right when the next generation of monarchs comes through. Our Aster and Oxeye Sunflower Grow Kit and our Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan Kit come as small pails that live happily on a step, a railing or a windowsill. Neither one needs a garden bed, a plan, or any previous experience with plants.
Think of it as booking next year's flight path.
3. Sow next year's nectar now and let winter do the work
Here is our favorite lazy trick. A lot of wildflower seeds actually want to sit outside through a cold, damp winter first. The chill is the signal that tells the seed spring is coming.
You can fake that in your refrigerator for a month or two. Or you can scatter the seed outside now and let the weather handle it, free of charge, while you are indoors with something warm.
Milkweed, coreopsis, black-eyed Susan and New England aster all come up best after a proper cold spell. Coneflower and bee balm do not need one, but a fall sowing does them no harm at all. Most of these spend their first year building roots and leaves, then flower in their second summer. Black-eyed Susan is the happy exception and often blooms in year one.
Our 18-variety Pollinator Wildflower Seed Mix is built for exactly this. Eighteen kinds of flower, some early and some very late, so something is always open for business. One bag covers a big patch.
No yard? Fill a wide pot or a window box with soil, scatter seed on top, and leave it outside all winter. Same trick, smaller stage.
Want it step by step? We wrote it up here: Fall Wildflower Seeds: Sow Now for a Spring Bloom.
4. Leave the leaves
Pollinators do not fly south for the winter. Nearly all of them stay right where you are, and a pile of leaves is basically a tiny apartment building.
Bumblebee queens tuck in an inch or two down. Woolly bear caterpillars curl up in there. Luna moths and swallowtails hang cocoons that look exactly like dead leaves, which is a very good trick and the reason you have probably raked up a few without ever knowing. About a third of America's wild bees skip the leaves and nest in small tunnels instead, in old beetle holes in dead wood and the hollow middles of flower stems, according to the Xerces Society.
So leave a corner of leaves somewhere nobody walks, and leave this summer's flower stalks standing rather than cutting them down. Then let the big cleanup wait until spring is properly warm.
Your garden looks a little more lived-in, which we think is the good kind of look.
No shrubs to tuck leaves under? A handful of leaves in a big pot does the same job. Small counts.
5. Set out a shallow dish of water
Bees and butterflies get thirsty, and a deep birdbath is a hazard for something that light.
The fix takes about a minute. Fill a saucer with pebbles or marbles, then add water until it comes halfway up the stones. The stones become dry landing spots, so everyone can drink without going for a swim.
Put it near your flowers, out of the wind, and top it off every few days. Butterflies love a patch of damp sand too. They sip minerals out of it, which is exactly as odd as it sounds.
This one works on a balcony, a fire escape or a windowsill without changing a thing.
6. Keep one small patch of bare ground
Most wild bees are not the honeybees from the picture books. They are solitary, they make no honey, they almost never sting, and about 70% of them nest underground in little burrows they dig themselves, according to the Xerces Society.
All they need is a bit of bare dirt to dig into. Not much. One sunny patch about the size of a doormat, left alone, and they will find it.
No yard? One spare pot of plain soil, nothing on top, somewhere sunny. That is a bee apartment.
Why any of this is worth doing
A monarch covers around 50 miles on a good day, then drops out of the sky in the afternoon to eat. It has to build up enough fat to last all winter, and it does that entirely on flowers it finds along the way.
That route runs straight over backyards, schoolyards, balconies and parking strips. Which means the habitat these butterflies need is habitat ordinary people can plant, in a pot, on a Saturday.
Your fall pollinator checklist
- Leave the last flowers. No snipping. The faded ones still feed somebody.
- Add late bloomers. Asters for the migration, coneflowers and black-eyed Susans for the long haul.
- Sow now for next year. Winter gives seeds the cold spell they want, free.
- Leave a corner of leaves. Plus this summer's flower stalks, left standing.
- Add water. A saucer of pebbles, topped off every few days.
- Leave a patch of bare dirt. One sunny spot, doormat sized.
- Save the cleanup for spring. Wait until it is properly warm.
Fall pollinator garden FAQ
When is the best time to plant a fall pollinator garden?
Now is a good time, and so is most of the fall. Anything already in bloom feeds this year's migration. Anything you sow between late summer and the first hard freeze gets a free winter chill and comes up in spring. There is no deadline to miss here, only a head start to take.
What flowers bloom latest for pollinators?
Asters and goldenrod are the last big ones standing, often flowering into October and November, with sneezeweed and sedum going nearly as long. Black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, zinnias and cosmos usually keep going until your first hard frost as long as you leave them unpruned. Bee balm and salvia are worth planting too, though they do their best work from midsummer on rather than at the very end.
Should I cut my garden back in the fall?
Mostly no, and that is good news for your weekend. Standing stems and a layer of leaves are where bees, caterpillars and cocoons spend the winter. If you like things tidier, clean up the paths and the spots you walk through and leave the rest. Save the real cutting back for spring, once temperatures are consistently warm.
Do seeds sown in fall really survive the winter?
Yes. That is exactly what they are built for. Wildflower seeds have been dropping to the ground in fall for a very long time, and the cold, damp months are what wake them up at the right moment in spring. Scatter them on the surface, press them into good contact with the soil, and let the weather do the rest.
Can I help pollinators from a balcony or a windowsill?
Absolutely, and you are in good company. Bees and butterflies find flowers on balconies, fire escapes and window boxes all the time, and a couple of pots really does count as a rest stop. Start with one pail of asters and one of coneflowers, put them somewhere sunny, and you are officially on the flight path.
Grow kits for your fall pollinator patch
Everything below is a complete kit: pot, seeds, soil, and a card that tells you what to do. No gardening experience required, and every Buzzy kit comes with our Grow Guarantee.
- Aster and Oxeye Sunflower Grow Kit (2 pack). Two small pails, one big late-season favorite.
- Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan Kit. Long bloomers that keep feeding birds after the petals go.
- Pollinator Wildflower Seed Mix, 18 varieties. Covers a big patch. Made for fall sowing.
- Save The Bees Grow Kits (12 pack). Biodegradable cups. Great for a classroom, a team, or party favors.
- Chaos Garden Pollinator Kit (set of 3). A deliberately unruly mix, which is the whole idea.
- Wildflower Seed Balls. Throw, water, walk away. The lowest-effort pollinator patch there is.
Browse the full Pollinator Collection or all Wildflowers.
One more thing
You do not have to do all six. Pick one.
Leave the leaves under a shrub. Put a saucer of pebbles on the step. Skip the pruning this month. Any single one of these makes your patch of the world a better place to be a bee, and not one of them requires you to be good at gardening.
The monarchs are already on their way. Nice of you to leave the light on.
Keep reading: Fall Wildflower Seeds: Sow Now for a Spring Bloom · How to Turn Any Space into a Pollinator Garden · 14 Vegetables and Herbs You Can Still Plant in July and August · How to Grow Sunflowers from Seed
Sources: Monarch Watch (migration timing) · Xerces Society, Leave the Leaves (where pollinators spend the winter) · Xerces Society, Nesting Resources (how wild bees nest) · Monarch Joint Venture (migration behavior and daily distance) · Prairie Moon Nursery (seed starting and cold requirements)