Showy Flower Mix: True Flowers for Pollinators and Beauty
Walk through our test plots to see how we built a mix of true flowers—zinnias, cosmos, poppies, marigolds—alongside cover crop species to attract pollinators and look good doing it. Davis Behle shows you which species bloom early, which come late, and how to stagger blooms from summer into fall.
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0:00 [Music]
0:05 So this here is our showy flower mix. This is made of lots of different true flowers. I emphasize true flowers because
0:14 We have many different cover crop species that are really great for pollinators and attracting beneficial insects but there's something to be said.
0:21 About what I would call these true flowers things like zenyas and marigolds corn flowers we've got cosmos in here these are things that I would.
0:32 Classify as true flowers versus things that would be more in a cover crop context such as sunflowers, mustards, clovers, things that are still going to.
0:42 Have that bloom but would maybe be less popular in a landscaping setting. So that's one of the reasons that this mix exists is for if we have an area where
0:53 We really want that aesthetic to be pleasing, somewhere close up to the house or for a pollinator strip where we really want to bring in a lot of neat.
1:02 Insect activity. I think there's some really unique insect activity here that we don't necessarily see on some of our other pollinator mixes. Those pollinator.
1:21 Variety of different butterflies. Working these over I see several hummingbird moths and lots of honeybees, and so we're really pleased.
1:30 With this mix in here we've got zenyas that are blooming early. We've got flax that's another blooming early species. Flax would be one that would be more.
1:40 From our cover crop context but really does a nice job in this mix providing a blue blossom. We've got the cornflowers also putting out a blue blossom and then.
1:49 We've got some later things that are coming such as marigolds looks like it's about to throw a flower in another 3 weeks. Cosmos ready to open up about any time. So we really stagger out that bloom period and get more flowers over an extended period of time.