What are your favorite late season flowing plants/bushes/trees for some extra late food for the pollinators who are still around before winter sets in? We’re blessed with a great array of natural, wild flowers around but with frosts starting in early Sept. those are pretty much done by now. I still have catnip heads with flowers (I don’t think they ever give up!), and borage, a few other herbs. But the highlight this year is some Hellenium I planted from seed, just a generic variety. what a surprise! I never walk by it without seeing bees on the flowers. It is still flowering and it was 28 deg this morning (not for the first time, either). These are in a garden border bed (which is actually in the middle of the orchard) but I’ll be transplanting some farther out into the orchard corridors later, mulched till they get established, and I hope they can hold their own in the field.
Zinnia’s are magnets like that. If you stagger the sowing of Zinnia’s you’ll have a whole season going late into Fall of flowers. I think my last planting of them was a month after the first planting and they are still around while the others have perished.
For my cold area, hardy mums, not garden mums, last through frost in my garden. Some years, they are still blooming when light snow is falling. Tough ladies.
Zinnias are very prolific but once frost arrives, they are dead.
My Autumn Joy already came and went. Right now Asters and Hardy mums are blooming.
Mountain mint (pycnanthemum muticum) blooms all summer until heavy frost. It spreads but not as aggressively as other mints. Not sure if it’ll survive in zone 3.
A bunch of my Rabe bolted in the heat so I just let the flowers grow. The flowers are small and yellow. They are covered in what I really think are honeybees and other native bees. Really pretty sight.
Lots of good suggestions! Thanks. As Mamuang noted, frost is an issue for some of those for me. But I do agree that zinnias are popular. I even covered for many frosts a few red flowering zinnias that were big favorites of both the hummingbirds and pollinators. Which reminds me I need to pick the seed heads off those. I also agree buckwheat is a great bee plant until it frosts and I have it growing all over the garden (not necessarily on purpose). It’s tender though (frost-wise). I’ll have to check out some of the other suggestions. It would be nice if there was a z3 hardy mum!
I have some generic mint for tea but it’s not a great bloomer so maybe Mountain Mint would be good to add. And I do have some sedum growing wonderfully on our roof (sod roof), hardy and beautiful, unknown variety, but I only see it when I go up there and haven’t noticed if it still has blooms. I have made a note to transplant some out to the orchard anyway. Thanks for the tip Susu.
Unfortunately, Mrs. G, I have failed as a Dahlia grower and overwinterer. They are beautiful though. I especially liked the smaller ones. We have a friend who is a dahlia-passionate man and gave me some tubers he thought would grow here, including one named after him. But alas I do better with vegetables and the simple flowers like marigolds. Which is also a very good late pollinator flower for me. I have and orange-red mixed unknown variety (been saving my own seed for years) and those in more protected areas have made it through the frosts. They’re rather ratty looking now but the bees don’t mind and they find those still good flowers nestled down in the thick clumps.
It’s nice to have some new (to me) plants to research and think about adding. Sue
Just thought of another bee magnet that can handle frost. Cilantro! I don’t have it blooming right now. I guess they’d need heat to bolt so you’d have to plant in summer. But since they can take cold weather they should stay in the garden for a while attracting bees.
My spring cilantro bolted after couple of days of heat but I still let it stay in the garden because the bees loved it!
My mother has some ruellias aka wild petunias. They bloom pretty much all season and are still flowering now. They’re on big long stalks about 5 feet high. Very nice purple flowers.
They don’t seem to be a flower that pollinators go absolutely bonkers for, but they attract their fair share of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds and I’m sure that now things are winding down they are appreciated that much more.
