Food:  A pollinator garden, with carefully chosen plants, will provide pollen and nectar for pollinators, but you can also supplement with special feeders for birds, hummingbirds, and even butterflies with Butterfly Feeders.

Water:  Birds, bees, butterflies, all living creatures need water!

 Make a Butterflies mud puddle!
For butterflies:  Butterflies are attracted to water along the edge of rivers and creeks, which provides them with salt and nutrients. You can create a “mud puddle” watering station for them. Use a shallow dish such as a plastic or terracotta plant saucer in a sunny area of your garden that is protected from the wind. Fill the bottom of the pan with sand, gravel, and a few small stones, add water to the dampen sand.

Bees: Bees drink water, but they also gather up to a gallon of water a day in hot weather to create “air conditioning” to cool the hive. Bees can drown while gathering water, so it’s important to provide them an escape; this can be done by adding pebbles, rocks, wood, or other types of “bee rafts” into a dish of water, birdbath or bucket of water. Bee rafts can be anything that floats like wine corks, small pieces of wood even packing peanuts.

Birds: provide a bird bath, a dish of water, install a water garden or a fountain.

Submitted by: Carlotta Lucas