New Study Confirms Pollinator-Friendly Plants Boost Biodiversity Across Garden Types

Introducing more – and a greater diversity of – pollinator-friendly plants in gardens brings different benefits in different landscapes, according to a new study.

American scientists selected 32 gardens across rural, suburban, and urban landscapes, enhancing half of them with plants from eight bee-attractive species and leaving the other half untouched.

Pollinator behaviour was then sampled across all gardens and during all seasons, measuring the number of pollinator visits, pollinator richness, and plant-pollinator interactions.

The study, published in Landscape Ecology, observed greater visitation rates in the enhanced gardens within urban and suburban areas but not within rural areas.

It also found that there was greater pollinator richness and more plant-pollinator interactions in enhanced gardens within all kinds of landscape.

In addition, the study witnessed a change in community composition across enhanced gardens in suburban and rural landscapes but not urban landscapes.

It is important to consider these findings alongside those of similar studies but they do suggest the introduction of pollinator-friendly plants can deliver some kind of benefit to all landscape types.