The ‘Accent Coral’ Impatiens was found to support the most pollinators of any Impatiens.

Need a statistic to convince you of the need to nudge customers toward more beneficial annuals?

“Among all flowering plants sold at garden centers in the United States every year, more than half are annual flowers, totaling nearly $2 billion in sales value in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of those sales—more than $900 million—are from the top six annuals: petunias, geraniums, pansies, begonias, impatiens, and New Guinea impatiens. (This group made up six of the top seven annuals in the United Kingdom in 2021, as well.)” Source: Entomology Today.

We’re used to seeing debates about which plants – usually natives or near-natives or nativars – are best for pollinators and all the while, it looks like that discussion is off in the fringes of ecogardening, while the public is still buying the same old things – especially annuals. Changing plant choices isn’t going to happen as fast as we’d like, so let’s meet the public where their dollars are actually going.

(First I’ll confess to pretty much hating all six of the annuals, and not because they’re so popular but because where we usually see them growing – think gas stations or at this entrance to a park near me – they look like crap and perform similarly. But back to their usefulness to pollinators.)

Helping Buyers Choose Better Annuals

And some good news, also via Entomology Today, “Annuals are often thought of as pollinator ‘deserts,’ but a new study suggests choosing the right varieties can give annual flowers a role in nourishing bees and other pollinating insects in home gardens… Researchers at Michigan State University ‘observed pollinators visiting 25 different varieties, or cultivars, of the six most popular annual flower species in the United States, finding significant variation in apparent pollinator attractiveness between cultivars, even within the same flower species. Two begonia cultivars, “Cocktail Brandy” and “Ambassador Rose Blush,” and the impatiens cultivar “Accent Coral” drew in the most pollinating insects among all those tested. Results of the study are published this week in the Journal of Economic Entomology.'”

Further, “Pollinating insects that visited flowers in the study included honey bees, bumble bees, sweat bees, and wasps—but also many flies in the family Syrphidae.”

‘Cocktail Brandy’ was found to be one of the best Begonias for supporting pollinators.  I still don’t like how it looks in beds like this one.

David Smitley, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University and lead author of the study, told Entomology Today that:

“’Our hope is that this research will lead to the development of cultivars of popular annuals that support pollinators, so that homeowners will be able to purchase the flowers they love that are also good for pollinators,’ Smitley says. More remain to be evaluated, and Smitley says the key lessons for entomologists and horticulturalists are that annual flowers can be evaluated for their support of pollinating insects and that enough variation exists among cultivars to warrant doing so.”

Well, kudos to Smithley and his team at MSU for helping the gardening public spend their money on better plants for pollinators.  Now imagine if retailers began promoting them?  Shoppers could be more eco-friendly without evening knowing it! Though signage and tags declaring their purchase to be bee-friendly might inspire them to get on board.

Lantana ‘Red Spread’

I say more research like this, please! And how about going beyond those old favorites, and studying other annuals that we know are great supporters of pollinators – like Lantana and Verbena, which GardenRant readers recommended to me and I reported on in this post.  (I then found Lantana to yield more “pollinator action” than any other plant of any type in my summer garden – action shown on this video.) And why not study perennials, too, in the same open-minded, nondogmatic way?

Nudging Gardeners to be Citizen Scientists

Smitley also says that “Even before more cultivars are evaluated by scientists or breeders develop more pollinator-friendly cultivars, any gardener can be a citizen scientist in this realm…They can purchase a mixture of cultivars—five or more is best—and observe which ones are visited by bees,” he says. “Then they will know for future years what they look like, how well they do in their garden, and how attractive they are to bees.”

Well, that’s just what I did last year and am doing again this year, refining my research with more varieties and eventually reporting here on the results.  The plants are all beautiful and it’s super-fun to sit back and observe what critters they attract.  It’s a thrill, and a pretty cheap thrill, at that.

Kudos also to Dr. Smitley for all the big-picture, big-impact work he’s been up to:

In the last four years the Smitley lab has worked with the greenhouse and nursery industries to develop best management strategies for growing annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs that will be safe for pollinators. This led to organizing a national conference on ‘Protecting Pollinators in Urban and Rural Habitats’ and a regional extension bulletin: Protecting and Enhancing Pollinators in Urban Landscapes, MSU Extension Bulletin E3314, available here.