A bee-friendly garden in the United States
Around 4,000 native bee species and a continent too large for one planting list. What transfers is the method — regional natives, a long season and bare ground — rather than the species.
Why there is no American plant list
The contiguous United States spans subtropical Florida, high desert, Mediterranean California, boreal Minnesota and everything between. A list that works in Vermont is wrong in Arizona in every particular — species, flowering month, water requirement and which bees are present. The honest national-level advice is a method rather than a list, and the method is: find your ecoregion, plant its natives, and cover the whole season rather than the peak.
The three genera that carry the American late season
- Goldenrod (Solidago)The most important late-season forage across most of the country — abundant nectar and pollen from August into October, at exactly the point colonies are provisioning for winter. It is also the plant most often blamed for hay fever, wrongly: goldenrod pollen is heavy and insect-carried, and ragweed flowering at the same time is the actual cause.
- Asters (Symphyotrichum and relatives)The other half of the American autumn, and the pair with goldenrod is the classic native planting. Between them they cover the weeks when nothing else is producing.
- Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum)Consistently among the highest-scoring plants in American pollinator trials for total insect visits and for diversity of visitors. Under-planted relative to how well it performs.
Regional starting points
| Region | Reliable natives in this catalogue | The seasonal problem |
|---|---|---|
| Northeast and Midwest | Goldenrod, asters, Joe Pye weed, mountain mint, monarda, blueberry | A short season — prioritise early spring and late autumn |
| Southeast | Sourwood, tulip tree, gallberry, saw palmetto, asters | A midsummer dearth once the tree flow ends |
| Great Plains and prairie | Liatris, echinacea, rudbeckia, helenium, milkweed | Drought, and the loss of continuous grassland |
| Southwest and desert | Mesquite, black sage, manzanita, California poppy | Water; flowering is rainfall-triggered rather than calendar-driven |
| California and Pacific coast | Black sage, manzanita, California poppy, phacelia | A long dry summer, and a compressed spring flowering |
What not to plant, and where it is illegal
Several plants recommended elsewhere on this site as good European forage are listed noxious weeds in American states, and a few are banned from sale outright. This is the sharpest example of forage value not travelling.
- Purple loosestrife — severely invasive in wetlands, prohibited in many states.
- Common buckthorn — invasive across the Northeast and Midwest, altering soil nitrogen and forming dense understorey.
- Norway maple — invasive in eastern North America and banned or restricted in several states.
- Lesser celandine — forms mats that exclude native spring ephemerals; banned or restricted in several states.
- Yellow star-thistle — among the most damaging rangeland weeds in the West, despite being a serious honey plant there.
- Tree of heaven, Chinese tallow, tamarisk, Brazilian pepper — all listed and all significant nectar sources, which is precisely why they spread.
Sources
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
- Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link
- The Bees of the World — Johns Hopkins University Press (2007) · Textbook
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Read next
Tools that use this
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?