A wildflower garden for pollinators ---free seeds giveaway! (CLOSED)

Hi Permies in the North half, have you started planning for your garden this year? I have been collecting and introducing native wildflowers to my garden. They not only look beautiful but also provide foods for the pollinators. I am offering limited amount of Midwest wildflower seeds to Permies users interested in the topic.

What are the seeds?

I am offering a bundle of eight, no individual request. They are a mix of self seeding annuals or perennials with the native range east of the Rocky mostly.

1. Common violet, probably Missouri violet. Violoa sororia
2. Red clover. Trifolium pratense
3. Butterfly weed. Asclepias tuberose
4. Tall green milkweed. A. Hirtella
5. Purple milkweed. A. Purpurascens
6. Foxglove beardtoungue. Penstemon digitalis
7. Showy partridge pea. Chamaecrista fasciculata
8. Tickseed sunflower. Bidens aristosa

All the milkweed seeds have been cold stratified and have 100% germination rate if planted in the potting mix.


How to request?

Offer is limited to mailing address of US lower 48 states only. I have 10 bundles total and will update when the seeds are out.

1. Post a rely listing your favorite flowers the types of pollinators they attract. They can be native or non native flowers
2. Send me an address in the purple mooseage as well.

We have quite a few posts discussing flowers and pollinators, please check them out and share your pictures.

Name the top plants in your yard for bees.
Post flowers native or non-native

Happy gardening!

Updated on 05/31: most seeds went out. The offer is no longer available. See you next time.

May Lotito wrote:
1. Post a rely listing your favorite flowers the types of pollinators they attract. They can be native or non native flowers

Living in Kansas I have to say Sunflowers are on the list. Also hops, clover, milkweed, eastern redbub tree and last saffron.

I think honeybees like most of the flowers on my list. Milkweed and monarch butterflies a great team. I remember reading the hops are wind pollinate but I would not rule out a pollinator liking hops. Bumbles bees I have heard like to dive into flowers. This is something I would like to see! I have been working on creating a pollinator lawn and trying and mostly failing to get a hive of honeybees going.

T Blankinship wrote:Bumbles bees I have heard like to dive into flowers. This is something I would like to see! I have been working on creating a pollinator lawn and trying and mostly failing to get a hive of honeybees going.

Good to know about the hops! The top bumble bee magnet in my garden is actually the luffa, and honeybees prefer other types of squashes.
For the lawn, white clovers attract so many bees that I got stung multiple times walking barefoot.

May, this is such a generous offer.

I planted Blue Bonnets on our homestead many years ago.  I wonder if they are still there.

When we moved where we live, I planted Blue Bonnets and Fire Wheels (aka Blanket Flowers).

These wildflowers have consistently come back every year from the seed that they are producing that drops to the ground.

One year during spring the wildflowers were especially beautiful.  When we drove around our property you could see how the rain had carried the Fire Wheels from their original location.

I hope to see lots of wildflowers this year, too.

Hi Anne, the colors are so vivid and stunning from bluebonnet and blanket flowers! I traveled in Texas before and did see lots of them growing by the roads. No wonder bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas.

As a kid, I remember going somewhere out in the country and seeing whole fields of wildflowers.

If I remember correctly, these were fields of Indian Paint Brush making these fields a sea of red.

Is the collection suitable for Ohio?

[quote=Peace Eigenheimer]Is the collection suitable for Ohio?[/quote]

The distribution ranges for most of them are in midwest area. So yes, including Ohio.

My favorite flower is a nonnative where I am, the globe thistle! It’s gorgeous. I’m branching out into native thistles now as well. They’re absolutely underrated and vital to quite a few birds and pollinators too. I wonder how many birds people are displacing by decimating local thistle populations.

But for insect-watching I am a huge fan of boneset and goldenrod. Just wow. I use iNaturalist to track my finds and I have seen so many native wasps and bees I’d never heard of before… I’ve watched metric paper wasps and Apache paper wasps together. The fraternal potter wasp always cracks me up. The five-banded thynnid wasp and the beautiful blue-winged scoliid wasp were gorgeous. Even the great golden digger wasps nesting beside the house loved them. Not to mention the flies and spiders I’ve seen. They’re the best plants to watch IMO and since they get so big the insects never seem to mind me in their faces trying to identify each one. They’re busy living their best lives.

Hi May!
My favorite flower is Anemone quinquefolia. Hoverflies, the mining bee and sweat bees are pollinators of This night-closing flower.

W. Hazel wrote:Hi May!
My favorite flower is Anemone quinquefolia. Hoverflies, the mining bee and sweat bees are pollinators of This night-closing flower.

I've never seen wood anemone in person but sure it's a beautiful plant. Let me know if you want the wildflower seeds because I don't see any message.

A fav of mine is poppy. Lots of bumbles and smaller pollinators come to visit.

Thanks, receiving these was such a pleasure!