As our beautiful city grows, Red Butte Garden recognizes the growing importance of providing safe, varied habitat and food sources for our native and migrating pollinators and other insect friends. We invite you to join us in connecting with and celebrating this part of our shared ecology.

The Garden's Meet your Polleneighbors Exhibit began in the Children's Garden in 2021 and expanded into a garden-wide homage to pollinators during 2022. In this exhibit, guests learn about ten important pollinators—native bees, migrating butterflies, native butterflies, ants, beetles, bats, wasps, flies, moths, and hummingbirds. Each of the featured pollinators have their own themed areas within the Garden where guests can do an educational deep dive by reading all the interpretive signage or simply enjoy the space and watch the pollinators in action.

Polleneighbor interpretive signage can be found throughout the Garden. Want to know specifics on how to share and provide better habitat? Head to the Natural Area Meadow to learn about how we can help native pollinators survive our cold winters. Visit the Herb and Rose Gardens if you are interested in how plant fragrance, nectar, and pollen to attract and motivate pollinators. Learn about the pressure that European honeybees put on our native pollinators as well as their many useful agricultural products in the Medicinal Garden. In the Visitor Center and Courtyard areas, we will be raising and releasing native and migrating butterflies with the help of our friends at raisingbutterflies.org.

NATIVE BEE STUDY

Take a quiet moment to watch, and you are likely to see many unique bee species in the Garden. In fact, in a study done onsite in 2012, researchers found that Red Butte Garden supported and housed a uniquely rich bee fauna compared to other observed areas in the valley and surrounds. They counted 132 different bee species representing 34 genera in just one season here. By comparison, that’s more than were counted over a 4-year period on 150,000 acres of land near the Utah/Idaho border.