Australian native plants that support pollinators in decline
A garden is a functioning piece of the food web that connects plants, insects, birds and soil organisms.
The New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae) is one of Australia's most important nectar-feeding birds and a key pollinator of banksias.
At the centre are pollinators: the native bees, butterflies, moths and beetles that move pollen between plants, enabling them to reproduce and sustain the ecosystems that everything else depends on.
The Australian moth (Parapoynx villidalis) is one of approximately 11,000 moth species in Australia, most of which pollinate native plants after dark.
Those networks are under pressure but a home garden can do something about it.
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Why Australian pollinators are in trouble
how much have pollinators declined in australia?
A 2023 Macquarie University study analysed thousands of research papers on pollinator decline globally and found that barely any mentioned Australasia. The crisis here has gone largely unnoticed. What we do know is that the same pressures present in Europe and North America like habitat loss, climate change, urbanisation and land clearing are operating here at the same scale, alongside the widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides.
Common grass yellow (Eurema hecabe) is a small, fast-flying butterfly found across northern and eastern Australia whose larvae feed on native legumes.
why is this a serious issue?
An estimated 15,000 animal species act as plant pollinators in Australia. Declines in those species cascade through to the estimated 20,000 species of flowering plants that rely on animal pollination to reproduce. This includes most fruits and many vegetables. After the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, the number of threatened Australian native bee species was expected to increase by nearly five times. We are losing something we have not yet properly counted.
Peacock carpenter bee (Xylocopa bombylans) is one of Australia's largest native bees, widespread across eastern and northern Australia and capable of buzz pollination.
what can a garden do to help?
A well-planted native garden can provide something that is genuinely scarce in the modern landscape: continuous, diverse, chemical-free forage and nesting habitat across the full seasonal calendar. A neighbourhood of well-planted gardens creates a connected corridor that pollinators can move through, breed within and depend on year round.
The single most important thing you can do
Stop using pesticides in your garden including products marketed as "safe" or "garden-friendly". If you have a genuine pest problem, address it mechanically: remove by hand, use sharp secateurs to cut out affected material, or accept a degree of insect damage as evidence that your garden is alive and functioning. A garden with no pest damage is a garden with no insects or pollinators.
Plants for native bees
Australia's native bees range from the chunky blue-banded bee to tiny stingless bees barely two millimetres long and their floral preferences vary. What most native bees share is a need for flowers that are not too deep, too waxy or too tightly closed for their body size and tongue length. Open, daisy-like flowers, shallow tubular flowers and flowers with exposed anthers are best.
Blue-banded bee (Amegilla cingulata) is a solitary native bee and skilled buzz pollinator found across mainland Australia, nesting in clay soil and soft mortar.
Stingless bees operate in colonies and forage at a very limited radius from their nest, typically 500 metres or less. This means they depend on a very high density of flowering plants within a small area. Mass planting a single species in flower simultaneously creates the kind of concentrated forage that sustains a stingless bee colony in a way that scattered individual plants can't.
Banksia (Banksia species)
Banksias are arguably the most important bee plants in the Australian flora. A single flower cone can contain thousands of individual flowers, each producing nectar and pollen. The dense, brush-like flower spikes allow bees to move systematically along the cone, collecting pollen with each step in a way that is as efficient as any foraging arrangement in nature.
Australia has over 170 banksia species spanning every climate zone. This breadth of species and flowering times means that with careful selection, banksias can provide a near-continuous food source across the full calendar year. See our guide to growing banksias for species matched to your climate.
Leptospermum scoparium (Tea Tree)
Tea tree is among the most valuable bee plants in the temperate Australian flora. The small, open, five-petalled flowers are perfectly accessible to native bees of all sizes and produce both pollen and nectar in quantity over a very long flowering period.
A mature tea tree in full flower in late winter is audibly alive with bee activity. It also supports a range of other insect pollinators including hoverflies and small native wasps. Prune hard after flowering each year to keep it dense and to ensure the flowering wood stays young and productive. See our guide to winter-flowering natives for companion planting across the cooler months.
Callistemon and Melaleuca (Bottlebrushes and Paperbarks)
Each bottlebrush spike is composed of hundreds of individual flowers, each presenting exposed stamens loaded with pollen. Bees move efficiently along the spike, collecting pollen with each step. It is one of the most productive foraging arrangements in the Australian flora.
Native bees, particularly larger species like the blue-banded bee and leafcutter bees, are extremely efficient at working these spikes. Callistemon 'Little John' flowers multiple times a year across a wide climate range and remains compact enough for containers. See our callistemon guide for species matched to your climate.
Chrysocephalum apiculatum (Yellow Buttons)
Small native bees that cannot access larger, deeper flowers depend heavily on open, flat flower heads with accessible pollen and nectar. Yellow buttons is one of the most important plants in this category as its clusters of small flower heads remain accessible to the full range of native bee body sizes, from the largest carpenter bees to the smallest native halictid bees.
Its near-continuous flowering through the warmer months makes it a reliable food source through the lean periods between major flowering events. Mass plant it as a groundcover under larger flowering shrubs and it will extend the foraging season considerably. See our guide to native daisies for more options.
Native bee nesting habitat
Around 70 per cent of Australia's native bees are ground-nesting species that excavate small burrows in bare or sparsely vegetated soil. Leaving a section of your garden without dense groundcover or mulch — particularly in a warm, north-facing, well-drained position — provides nesting habitat that no amount of flowering plants can substitute for. The remaining 30 per cent nest in hollow plant stems, dead wood or the pithy stems of grasses and sedges. A blue-banded bee, for instance, will often nest in a single consolidated burrow in soft mortar or clay-based soil, returning to the same spot for its entire adult life. Resisting the urge to immediately remove dead plant material from the garden is one of the most practical things you can do to support the full range of native bee species.
Plants for butterflies
Butterflies have two distinct plant requirements: nectar plants that adult butterflies feed from and host plants that their larvae feed on. To support butterfly diversity, a garden needs both — ideally with host plants and nectar sources in close proximity. Many butterfly species have a lifespan measured in days, so a newly emerged butterfly that cannot find forage within a short radius will die before it reproduces.
Most butterfly larvae are highly specific in their host plant requirements, feeding on one genus or even one species. This specificity means that the loss of a single host plant species from a local landscape can eliminate an entire butterfly population from that area permanently.
Lomandra longifolia (Spiny-headed Mat Rush)
Lomandra is one of the most important butterfly host plants available to Australian gardeners. Several species of skipper butterfly which is a family of small, fast-flying butterflies, use lomandra as their sole larval host plant.
The female lays eggs on the strap-like leaves and the caterpillars feed within protective leaf rolls they construct by binding leaves together with silk. Without lomandra or closely related grass-like plants, these skipper species simply cannot breed in the local area.
Skipper butterfly (family Hesperiidae) is a diverse family of small, fast-flying butterflies whose larvae depend on lomandra and closely related grass-like plants.
Lomandra also tolerates an extraordinary range of conditions including full shade, waterlogged soil, drought and coastal exposure, making it one of the most practically useful plants in this guide. See our guide to native grasses for companion species.
Hardenbergia violacea (Purple Coral Pea)
For butterflies, hardenbergia is a larval host plant for several species of blue butterfly in the family Lycaenidae, one of the largest butterfly families in Australia, containing some of the most brilliantly coloured and ecologically intricate species.
The relationship is genuinely remarkable: many Lycaenid caterpillars are tended by ants that protect them from predators in exchange for secretions the caterpillars produce from specialised glands. The whole system operates within the microhabitat of the host plant. Planting hardenbergia as a fence cover rather than a small isolated shrub gives larvae and adults a larger, more stable resource to work with.
Acacia species (Wattles)
Wattles are among the most important butterfly host plants in Australia. Dozens of species use various acacias as larval hosts, including several blue and copper butterflies, the imperial white and a range of moths. The Lycaenid-acacia-ant relationship described above reaches its most complex expression in wattle-dependent species: some caterpillars communicate with the attending ants acoustically, producing vibrations that mimic the sounds of ant larvae to maintain their protection.
It is one of the stranger ecological arrangements in the Australian fauna and it depends entirely on the presence of the right acacia species. See our guide to growing wattles for species matched to your climate zone.
Viola hederacea (Native Violet)
Native violet is the larval host plant for several species of Jezebel and Leafwing butterfly, and one of the few genuinely shade-tolerant plants on this list with real butterfly value. It spreads steadily as a groundcover under established trees and in damp, shaded positions where most other plants struggle, producing small purple and white flowers almost continuously.
In a shaded garden that receives butterfly visits but offers no larval host plants, adding a patch of native violet is a high-value intervention that requires almost no maintenance. See our guide to native groundcovers for companion plants in shaded positions.
Plants for moths
Moths are the overlooked pollinators. There are approximately 11,000 moth species in Australia, more than ten times the number of butterfly species, and many are significant pollinators of native plants that flower at night or at dusk.
Several native plants are exclusively or primarily moth-pollinated and their flowers reflect this: pale or white in colour for visibility in low light, strongly fragrant to guide moths from a distance and often tubular to suit the long hovering tongue of a hawk moth. The hawk moths themselves are extraordinary — some Australian species have a tongue longer than their own body, extended in flight while they hover at a flower like a small feathered helicopter.
Vine hawk-moth (Hippotion celerio) is a nocturnal pollinator whose tongue can exceed its own body length, drawn to fragrant white flowers at dusk.
Supporting moths in the garden is partly about planting and partly about what you do not do. Outdoor lighting at night is one of the most significant and underacknowledged threats to moth populations as it disrupts navigation, mating behaviour and host plant-finding across entire local populations.
Wattle goat moth (Endoxyla encalypti) is a large native moth whose larvae bore into wattle wood; the adults are nocturnal and attracted to light, making artificial garden lighting a particular threat.
A single security light can disorient moths across a radius of hundreds of metres. Reducing or eliminating artificial garden lighting, or switching to amber-spectrum lights that are less disruptive to insects, has a measurable positive effect on moth diversity that costs nothing once the fitting is changed.
Pittosporum undulatum (Sweet Pittosporum)
Sweet pittosporum's small white flowers are unremarkable in daylight. At dusk, they release an intense, sweet fragrance that is detectable from a considerable distance and reliably draws in hawk moths and other nocturnal pollinators from well beyond the garden boundary.
This is classic moth-pollination engineering: save the advertisement for when your target audience is flying. It provides excellent dense cover for birds as well as its pollinator value. Worth noting: pittosporum can be weedy outside its natural range in parts of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia so check local guidelines before planting near bushland.
Xanthorrhoea (Grass Trees)
Grass trees are ecologically extraordinary. A single flowering spike can carry tens of thousands of individual flowers, making it one of the most productive foraging resources per plant in any native garden. The strong, sweet fragrance intensifies at night, drawing in moth species that would not visit during the day.
Some specialist moth species in Australia are found almost exclusively on grass tree flowers and have apparently co-evolved with them over millions of years — an ecological relationship older than most of the human structures around them. Grass trees are slow-growing but essentially permanent. Planting one is a multi-generational investment. They resent root disturbance, so use a hori-hori to prepare the planting hole without compacting surrounding soil.
Eucalyptus species (Eucalypts)
Many eucalyptus species produce the majority of their nectar output at night, making them critical resources for nocturnal pollinators including moths, possums and flying foxes.
The flowers are pale in colour and heavily scented after dark. From a moth perspective, eucalypts also function as larval host plants for a significant number of species, including several of the large and spectacular emperor moths and hawk moths whose larvae feed on eucalyptus foliage. A mature eucalypt in a garden supports more moth diversity than almost any other planting decision you could make. See our guide to growing small eucalypts for species suited to garden conditions.
Plants for beetles
One in every four described animal species on earth is a beetle and Australia has a vast beetle fauna that includes many important pollinators. Beetle pollination, called cantharophily, is one of the oldest pollination systems on earth, predating the evolution of bees. Many ancient flowering plant lineages are primarily or exclusively beetle-pollinated.
Fiddler beetle (Eupoecila australasiae) is a common Australian beetle and important pollinator, strongly attracted to open, bowl-shaped flowers with abundant exposed pollen.
Beetles are generally less selective than bees and butterflies about flower structure, but they strongly favour open, bowl-shaped flowers with abundant exposed pollen and flowers with strong scent. They are also significant pollinators of plants that other insects avoid, including some with waxy or tough petals.
Providing beetle habitat in the garden, including decaying wood, leaf litter, bark and undisturbed soil, is as important as the flowers themselves, since many beetle species spend the majority of their lifecycle as larvae in decomposing organic matter. A tidy garden with no dead wood or leaf litter is a garden with no beetle nursery.
Corymbia ficifolia (Red Flowering Gum)
Red flowering gum is one of the most productive beetle resources in a garden context. The large, open flower clusters present abundant pollen at a scale and accessibility that beetles find irresistible. The flat-topped, bowl-like structure of each flower head is well suited for a beetle to land, grip and feed.
Longhorn beetles in particular are regular visitors, and a tree in full flower in summer will typically host multiple beetle species simultaneously alongside its well-documented bird and bee visitors. Native to southwestern WA but widely adapted across most Australian climates when grafted onto appropriate rootstock, it is among the most broadly useful flowering trees for gardeners in any climate zone.
Scaevola aemula (Fan Flower)
Fan flower is one of the most useful small-scale pollinator plants in Australian gardens and one of the few groundcovers on this list with well-documented beetle value. The distinctive open, fan-shaped flowers present pollen at the surface in a flat, accessible arrangement that suits a wide range of beetle body sizes, from large pollen beetles to small, specialist visitors.
Unlike many tubular or enclosed flowers that exclude beetles entirely, scaevola's open structure is essentially built for landing and feeding. Its near-continuous flowering across the warmer months makes it a reliable resource during the lean periods between major flowering events, and its tolerance of coastal conditions, sandy soils and part shade gives it a practical range that few other pollinator groundcovers can match. Mass plant it at the front of a border or at the base of larger flowering shrubs to extend the foraging surface to ground level.
Brachychiton (Kurrajong and Flame Trees)
Brachychiton species, including the kurrajong, flame tree and lacebark, are among the most important beetle pollination plants in tropical, subtropical and arid Australian landscapes. The open, bell-shaped flowers present pollen and nectar in a configuration that is highly accessible to beetles, and several Brachychiton species attract specialist beetle visitors found on few other plants.
The Illawarra flame tree (Brachychiton acerifolius) suits subtropical and warm temperate gardens; the kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus) handles drought and poor soils across a very wide inland range. Both are significant beetle resources in their respective climates.
Hibbertia scandens (Guinea Flower)
Guinea flower produces large, open, bright yellow flowers with a dense central cluster of exposed stamens. This flower architecture is strongly attractive to pollen-collecting beetles, which are drawn to open bowl shapes and abundant exposed pollen in preference to tubular or enclosed flowers.
It is regularly observed hosting significant numbers of pollen-collecting beetles during its long flowering season alongside its bee visitors. It is a scrambling climber useful for covering fences and low structures and tolerates a wide range of soils. See our guide to native climbers for fences for growing detail.
Designing for continuous flowering
The single most effective design principle for a pollinator garden is continuous flowering across the full calendar year. Pollinators that cannot find food during a gap in the flowering calendar will leave the area and may not return. Aim for at least three species in flower at any one time across every season. Winter is the most critical gap to fill — the plants most likely to do it in temperate gardens are banksias, grevilleas, correas, hardenbergia and wattles. In subtropical and tropical gardens, callistemons and melaleucas typically carry the winter flowering load. See our guide to winter-flowering natives for a full list of options.
The garden as habitat, not just garden
Pollinators need more than flowers: they need nesting sites, larval host plants, water, undisturbed ground, leaf litter and freedom from chemical interference. A garden that provides all of these things alongside a continuous sequence of flowering native plants is genuinely different in ecological value from one that simply has attractive flowers in it.
It is worth pausing to appreciate what these animals actually do. A blue-banded bee can vibrate its flight muscles at precisely the right frequency to shake pollen loose from a flower that withholds it from every other visitor. A hawk moth can hover motionless in complete darkness, extending a tongue longer than its own body to reach nectar at the base of a tube it cannot see. A skipper butterfly finds the single species of grass its larvae require in a garden it has never visited before. A fiddler beetle navigates to an open flower by scent alone, lands with precision and picks over the stamens with a methodical efficiency that would take a human hours to replicate.
These are not simple creatures doing simple work. They are the reason flowering plants exist at all and the reason the food web holds together. The value of what you plant is multiplied by what your neighbours plant and that multiplication effect is why the conversation about pollinator-friendly gardening matters at a scale well beyond the individual garden gate.
keep reading
A Guide to Australian Native Gardening
How to plan, plant and care for a thriving native garden, whatever your experience level.
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