As urban development reduces nature’s footprint, home gardens can step into the gap by providing food, water, and shelter for all forms of insect and small animal life. The Garden Media Group’s trend report for 2026 notes that gardeners are not just gardening for personal pleasure, but to ‘heal the world.’ Remember the slogan, Think global, act local ? Gardening for biodiversity and for a healthy environment, ‘offers a way to take tangible visible action,’ says the 2026 trends report.
Pollinators like butterflies, bees, and other beneficial insects are most at risk, being vulnerable to garden poisons and low-maintenance landscapes that are devoid of nectar rich flowers. Planting a pollinator garden or just dedicating a portion of the garden to pollinators, needn’t be complicated, time consuming or expensive. Besides, butterflies are a joy to watch, bringing beauty and grace into the garden while bees add a special energy.
It has been found that butterflies and bees are more strongly attracted to gardens with a greaterdiversityof pollen-rich flowers. Blue, purple, violet, white, and yellow flowers are the most attractive to bees and butterflies. Group the same flowers together, which makes it easier for pollinators to harvest the pollen or nectar, and they use less energy.
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If space allows, try to plant at least one square meter of the same type of flower together. It is not necessary to just have indigenous plants. There are many non-indigenous plants that are just as nectar rich.
Even if your priority is to have an indigenous garden, it can be an advantage to have a couple exotic plants on the basis of their bee or butterfly attractiveness. The pollinating activity will help the indigenous varieties to thrive. Echinacea purpurea hybrids offer the gardener an array of brightly coloured flowers on compact, well branched plants from summer to autumn.
The Echinacea Artisan Collection comprises strong individual colours, that soften as they age. There is ‘Red Ombre’ (crimson red), ‘Soft Orange’ and ‘Yellow Ombre’. Echinacea ‘PowWow’ is the most compact Echinacea with white or wild berry (deep rose) flowers and it produces more flowers per plant than other echinacea.
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