The Butterflyway Project encourages people to start supporting pollinators by planting wildflower gardens, which give the pollinators pollen and nectar.  However, pollinators have many other needs.  Besides food and water, they also need the habitat necessary to support their full life cycle, including– in our climate– shelter through the winter months.  This can be addressed by what we call habitat gardening or sustainable gardening. To achieve this, we can change many of our maintenance practices and other gardening methods. Many of these changes also address the climate crisis.  We recommend the following articles to get you started:

• From the Canadian Wildlife Federation website:
Gardening for Pollinators
Gardening for Butterflies

• From Beyond the Tides, Fall, 2023 (Blomidon Naturalists Society Journal)
Easy Steps to Create a More Sustainable, Pollinator Friendly Garden

• Savvy Gardening is a useful web site run by people who garden in our bioregion, including Nicki Jabbour of Nova Scotia. Particularly useful articles are:
Planning a habitat garden that supports beneficial insects, animals, amphibians and birds: 
Climate Change Gardening: 12 strategies for a resilient garden 

• A list of drought tolerant plants for our region can be found in Plant lists