Native Perennials & Groundcovers by Bloom Color
Aesthetics or pollinators, this guide can help.
Our Pacific Northwest native flowers come in a variety of colors, each specialized for their ecosystem. Whether you are curating your landscape's look or attracting wildlife, bloom color is an important consideration.
This article organizes some of our native perennials and groundcovers by bloom color. It is part of our Species Selection Guide where we share select collections of plants based on their ecosystem services, site condition needs, or material type.
Why is Bloom Color Important?
From an aesthetic perspective, color has many roles in a garden. Color can set a mood, pull a space together as an organizational component, or spotlight notable features. The consideration of color is often discounted as frivolous, but in fact, color can be very practical.
Our native plants adapted their colors to allure our native insect pollinators. In theory, planting a variety of colors in a landscape increases the biodiversity of pollinators. Color is just one factor that attracts insect pollinators to a flower. While insect pollinators display pigmentation preferences, research shows that flowers with similar colors do not attract similar pollinators.
Other features, such as pollen or nectar rewards and flower form, heavily dictate pollinator preferences for flowers. Oftentimes, cultivar varieties have compromised pollen or nectar, rendering them fairly useless for our pollinator friends. Some pollinating insects are notably more charismatic than others, but all play very important roles in supporting our shared ecosystems. As always, planting native biodiversity is the way to attract native biodiversity.
Select Native Flowers by Color
Each link leads to more information on our Plant Descriptions webpage.
Orange
White
Additional Pollinator Resources
Pollinators Show Flower Colour Preferences but Flowers with Similar Colours do not Attract Similar Pollinators by Sara Reverté, Javier Retana, José M Gómez, and Jordi Bosch
Pacific Northwest Native Plants and Native Cultivars, part I: Pollinator Visitation by Jen J-M Hayes, Nicole C Bell, Lincoln R Best, Svea R Bruslind, Devon O Johnson, Mallory E Mead, Tyler S Spofford, and Gail A Langellotto
Picking Plants for Pollinators: The Cultivar Conundrum by Justin Wheeler
Pollinator Conservation Resources: Pacific Northwest Region Xerces Society