One of the many joys of a backyard garden is witnessing how many of nature’s visitors they attract. Some of the most important visitors are pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

Fun to watch while they work but also essential to the survival of nearly every species of flower, fruit and vegetable we grow, pollinators feed from nectar and collect pollen, transferring the genetic material necessary for reproduction as they go from flower to flower, plant to plant.

Unfortunately, pollinator populations have been drastically declining in recent years, placing agriculture and food production as we know it, as well as ecosystems — both locally and the world over — at grave risk of longterm peril.

When it comes to butterflies — and specifically the well-known Western monarch butterfly — diminished habitat and aggressive agricultural use of pesticides are the two main culprits science points to as the cause for such rapid declines. Alarmingly, over the course of the past two decades alone, the population of monarchs has plummeted by nearly 95 percent, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

While we can’t alone stop the widespread use of pesticides that has led to such escalating concerns for the monarchs, we can immediately help them and other pollinators on a smaller scale by providing a healthy habitat. Planting a butterfly garden or patch of pollinator-friendly plants is a great way to ensure these helpful insects become frequent flyers in your yard. The changing colors of flowers and foliage throughout the season and the interest these plants add to your landscape should be reason enough to include them.

Although we’re at the edge of the Western monarch’s migration corridor that stretches from California to Canada, we do see monarchs here in Central Oregon. From May through October they work their way north over several generations and pass back through heading south as a single “super generation” of offspring that make the entire journey in one trip.

Katya Spiecker, founder of the nonprofit Monarch Advocates of Central Oregon, said that any habitat that covers monarchs’ four basic needs can be a valuable “waystation” for those passing through. These simple needs include a sheltered place to rest, a food source, host-specific plants for reproduction and a bit of water mixed with soil for puddling — which is how some insects consume moisture and minerals.

Spiecker has been creating these waystations in community gardens throughout Bend since July 2015, when the MACO founder won a grant for community improvement from Awesome Bend, the local chapter of a global organization called the Awesome Foundation. After pitching the idea “Shark Tank”-style to a live audience — each of whom contributed an additional $200 from their own pockets — trustees awarded MACO a $1,000 grant.

After forming the nonprofit and creating the educational signs present at each waystation, this initial seed money, quite fittingly, went mostly to purchasing seeds for the one-and-only host-specific plant monarchs require for survival. According to Spiecker, “The essential ingredient in any monarch waystation is milkweed.”

Milk-what?!

Yes, milkweed, a flowering perennial with soft, green, lambs-ear shaped leaves. While adult monarchs can obtain energy from a variety of other nectar plants, caterpillars depend on this single food source for survival.

“There’s only one milkweed native to Central Oregon and that’s the ‘asclepius speciosa,’ or ‘showy milkweed,’” said Karen Theodore of Winter Creek Native Plant Restoration and Nursery in Bend. There are over 70 other species, but both she and Spiecker warn that planting any other nonnative species is a no-no — not only for the adverse affects on our local ecosystem but also because some are actually poisonous to the monarchs in need of help.

Milkweed is a hardy plant that needs moderate water needs and goes to flower in June.

“(It) gets pretty happy and tends to spread, so you may want to contain it,” Theodore said. “Although the flowers themselves aren’t long-lived, it puts on a seed pod, and as it matures, they open up and send out seeds with little parachutes.”

She added, “Once you have an established plant, you’ll always have it.” Theodore showed off her 2-year-old plant in front of a greenhouse, already 18 inches tall. “They’ll go into dormancy during winter, but then, boom, they’ll come right back in the spring.” She took her trowel and loosened the soil around a smaller plant — an offshoot still connected to the root system of the mother plant a foot away. She pulled it from the ground, showed the shallow, tuberous lateral roots, and explained that these roots, called rhizomes, are one way the plant reproduces.

“You just cut it like that, pop it in a pot, and it becomes a new plant you can share with a friend,” she said as she demonstrated how to cut a root section a couple of inches long, making sure there are at least a few nodes with trailing roots.

Butterfly gardens serve pollinators best when you plant several varieties with bloom times that span through the entire season. The following are some of the companion plants Theodore recommends planting in full sun with the early-to-bloom milkweed, all of which she sells at Winter Creek:

• White-flowering yarrow is a great midsummer blooming plant that both birds and pollinators flock to, she said. “It gets a bad rap because if it’s overwatered, it spreads everywhere, but with light water, it behaves.”

• Mint-scented monarda — also fittingly known as bee balm or wild bergamot — has lavender-pink flowers with long stamens. Growing to a few feet tall, monarda blooms for several months, helping to fill gaps between the shorter bloom-times of other plants.

• For late-summer blooms that can continue through fall, consider planting Douglas aster. With daisy-shaped, bluish-purple flowers on tall stems, this easy-to-grow perennial spreads to 2 feet in diameter, reaching 1 to 4 feet tall.

• Goldenrod forms shorter, spreading clumps of foliage with — you guessed it — golden-yellow flowers. This mid-to-late flowering perennial is a favorite of both bees and butterflies.

• Adding taller flowering shrubs to your pollinator garden is a great way to provide variety as well as to create the shelter component necessary for protecting butterflies during windy conditions and storms. The Douglas spirea grows up to 6 feet tall, making it a great candidate for the back of a bed. There are smaller spireas, Theodore said, but the Douglas flowers late, making it a valuable nectar plant when others have gone to seed.

• The same can be said for both gray and green rabbitbrush. This smaller yellow-flowering shrub from the aster family “really helps the butterflies and the bees fatten up before winter rolls around,” she said.

• A perfect shrub for a smaller bed might be Oregon’s only true salvia: the blue-flowering Purple Sage salvia, or salvia dorii. It grows only as tall as it is wide — about 2 feet — but is particularly drought tolerant once it gets established and looks great planted next to Yarrow and Monarda.

Creating pollinator-friendly habitat isn’t just about monarchs and other butterflies, however. Birds and bees as well as other helpful insects are also seeing their populations dwindle, making it immensely important for us to provide any additional pesticide-free food sources we can.

For all the good your garden may do, planting these nectar-rich perennials will reward you for years to come with an ever-changing display of showy color for both you and your neighbors to enjoy.

— Reporter: laurakessinger@gmail.com