Turning a lawn into a garden for bees and butterflies

A practical guide for Ridents readers, written from everyday experience.

A patch of lawn left to grow long from spring to late summer becomes a meadow with almost no effort, and the insects arrive within weeks. Add a few native wildflower plugs, let clover and daisies flower before mowing, and leave a strip of longer grass along a fence through winter so caterpillars and beetles have somewhere to shelter.

A patch of lawn left to grow long from spring to late summer becomes a meadow with almost no effort, and the insects arrive within weeks.

A shallow dish of water with pebbles gives bees a safe drink, and a log pile in a shady corner houses beetles and the birds that eat them. Skip pesticides entirely; a healthy garden balances itself within a season or two. The reward is a garden that moves and hums, costs less to maintain than a lawn, and looks different every week of the year.