Turn your Colorado landscape into a living pollinator corridor with native wildflowers, grasses, and shrubs chosen for your region. Create nonstop color, invite bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, cut water use, and skip chemicals.
Colorado is built for pollinator friendly gardening. From high mountain towns and Front Range suburbs to eastern plains and canyon country, you can turn any yard, school, or streetside strip into a busy buffet for native bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, and beneficial insects.
The strategy is simple: choose regionally native plants, keep something flowering from early spring through fall, plant in generous clumps, and skip pesticides.
Every plant below comes straight from trusted regional pollinator plant lists so you can plant with confidence for your part of Colorado.
Colorado stretches across several Xerces style regions. In this guide we blend three: the Rocky Mountains Region (mountains and foothills), the Southern Plains Region (eastern Colorado and prairie influenced sites), and the Southwest AZ CO NM Plateaus Region (Four Corners and high desert plateaus). Use the section that best matches your site, or mix thoughtfully if you garden where ecosystems overlap.
Cool nights, bright sun, lean soils. Think resilient perennials with deep roots, long bloom, and strong wildlife value.
Build layered mountain and foothill habitat by combining flowering forbs, shrubs, and grasses. These natives support native bees, bumble bees, butterflies, moths, and beneficial insects while handling Colorado style weather.
| Native Plants | Colorado, Rocky Mountains, United States |
|---|---|
| Attracts | Birds, Butterflies, Hummingbirds, Bees |
Hot summers, wind, big sky. Ideal for deep rooted grasses, prairie wildflowers, and shrubs that laugh at drought and feed a huge insect community.
Use Southern Plains species in eastern Colorado, open sites along the Front Range, and any sunny, dry bed where you want nonstop color and tough, wildlife rich planting.
High, open plateaus, pinyon juniper, slickrock, and arroyos. Plants here need to handle lean soils, bright sun, and big temperature swings.
If you garden in the Four Corners area or similar high desert conditions, lean on the Southwest AZ CO NM Plateaus palette. These species love sun, save water, and are outstanding for native bees and butterflies.
Start with your location: mountains, plains, or plateau. Pick a mix of spring, summer, and fall bloomers from the lists above, plant in sunny patches, and keep chemicals out of the equation. In one or two seasons you will see bees cruising the coneflowers, butterflies sipping from blazing stars and milkweeds, and seed eating birds working the standing stalks. That is when your Colorado garden stops being just pretty and becomes real habitat.
Bees (both native and honeybees), butterflies including monarchs, moths, beetles, flies, hummingbirds, and sometimes bats in certain habitats.
They help wildflowers, native plants, and crops reproduce by transferring pollen. Healthy pollinator populations boost biodiversity, support food webs, and strengthen ecosystems.
A variety of native flowering plants that bloom spring through fall.
Sites for nesting or larvae: bare soil patches for ground-nesting bees, hollow stems for cavity nesters.
Water sources: shallow dishes, damp soil, or low containers.
Minimal use of pesticides and herbicides.
At minimum, pick 8-12 species that bloom at different times (spring, summer, fall). In larger landscapes or restoration areas aim for 20-30 or more.
Many pesticides, especially systemic insecticides, can harm pollinators. To protect them: choose plants treated without systemic insecticides; avoid applying insecticides and herbicides during bloom; use alternative pest management.
Choose a sunny spot. Pick one early spring bloomer, two summer bloomers, and one late-season bloomer. Plant them in clumps of 3-5. Add a shallow dish of water and leave a bit of bare ground or hollow stems nearby. Skip pesticides. Watch it come alive.
Updated: November 2025 • Based on Xerces Society regional plant lists
Mouse, Flickr
| Native Plants | Colorado, Rocky Mountains, United States |
|---|---|
| Attracts | Birds, Butterflies, Hummingbirds, Bees |
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Create a membership account to save your garden designs and to view them on any device.
Becoming a contributing member of Gardenia is easy and can be done in just a few minutes. If you provide us with your name, email address and the payment of a modest $25 annual membership fee, you will become a full member, enabling you to design and save up to 25 of your garden design ideas.
Join now and start creating your dream garden!
