This week, we recognize Pollinator Week, a well-deserved opportunity to celebrate and raise awareness about a critical category of city wildlife and the plants that support them. The symbiotic—or mutually beneficial—relationships between pollinators and flowering plants are diverse and complex, the result of 140 million years of co-evolution since the first pollen-bearing plants arose.

Pollinators fertilize plants, enabling them to generate flowers, seeds, and fruit, and to reproduce. Adult pollinators lay their eggs on these plants and feed on their nectar. Larvae and caterpillars rely on the shelter and nourishment of these plants to develop into adults. This incredible teamwork happens even in the most urban of environments, with planted oases like the High Line providing both essential food and shelter to native pollinators.

Most of us might think of bees when we think of pollination, but there are myriad other wild pollinators playing outsized roles in nature. In addition to wild and native bees, pollinators include birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, beetles, and even small rodents and mammals. (Honeybees are actually a domesticated species in the US.) Consider that 80% of Earth’s flowering plants cannot self-pollinate and rely on pollinators to reproduce. These are the plants that provide food and shelter for wildlife, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and provide much of the food we eat.

However, scientists are observing alarming declines in pollinator populations as pressures mount from all sides—loss and fragmentation of their habitats, the misuse of pesticides and herbicides, pathogens (disease), parasites, pollution, and invasive species. Pollinators have also been particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which has caused pollinator migration and visitation to fall out of sync with the blooming cycle of their host plants and pollen and nectar sources.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

According to a March 2025 study from NatureServe, 22% of North American pollinators are at elevated risk of extinction. The rusty patched bumble bee, the first bumble bee to be listed as federally endangered in the continental US, has lost 87% of its historic range. The Monarch butterfly has experienced population drops of up to 80%, and nearly 35% of native North American bee species—particularly leafcutter and digger bees—are threatened with extinction due to host plant reductions and disease. Butterflies—the featured species of Pollinator Week 2026—have been particularly impacted, with several species reaching, or hovering at, endangered status. Of all the essential ecological functions that our gardens and plants perform for New York, providing attractive habitats that support and nurture our pollinators is among the most vital.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Hosts with the mosts 

Some pollinators can be quite picky about where they lay their eggs, as their larvae require the shelter and nourishment of a specific host plant to hatch, grow, and complete their transition into adults. Their tastes can be just as specialized in discerning which plants they pollinate and which flower’s nectar they’ll eat as adults. When these native host plants become unavailable, the pollinators vanish with them.

Fortunately, the High Line is a pollinator paradise! The park currently provides a home to 33 species of native, wild bees, and dozens of species of visiting, overwintering, and local birds, as well as robust populations of beetles, moths, beneficial wasps, hummingbirds, flower flies, and other pollinating wildlife. Here’s a tour of the High Line gardens through the eyes—and antennas, long tongues, and proboscises—of the pollinators who populate them.

Caption

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa)

Location: Wildflower Field between 27th and 30th Streets

A late summer and early fall bloomer, its heavy, sticky pollen attracts bees, beetles, ants, butterflies, beneficial wasps, and moths. It is a very important nectar source for queen bumblebees that need to fatten up before they overwinter in the soil, to emerge in the spring and lay their eggs. It also serves as a host plant for the wavy-lined emerald geometer moth, whose caterpillars—better known as inchworms—camouflage themselves with petals and plant parts while consuming the goldenrod’s juicy buds. The caterpillars pupate in a camouflaged cocoon over winter and hatch in the spring.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Hoary mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) 

Location: Hudson River Overlook (14th–15th Streets), Chelsea Grasslands, and the Wildflower Field

Though not a true mint, its high nectar production makes this plant the hands-down pollinator favorite, unmatched in the number of bees, butterflies, hoverflies, beetles, and wasps it attracts. Its oils are also an effective mosquito repellent.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium/ Raydon’s Favorite)

Location: Chelsea Grasslands (19th–20th Streets) and the Wildflower Field (27th–30th Streets)

This fall bloomer is beneficial to late-season pollinators, like Monarch butterflies traveling south during their fall migration, as well as many species of bees as they prepare for winter. In fact, just about every species of North American bee forages for its pollen and nectar. It serves as host for many moths and syrphid flies—also known as flower flies and hover flies—whose larvae consume aphids, an unwanted pest that damages plants. With their black and yellow stripes, you might mistake these pollinating flies for bees.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Milkweed: Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa); swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata subsp. pulchra); purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens); common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca); whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata)

Location: 10th Avenue Square (16th Street), Chelsea Grasslands (19th–20th Streets), and the Wildflower Field (27th–30th Streets)

Milkweed is the only host plant and food source for the Monarch caterpillar, while the toxins in milkweed provide Monarchs with their iconic black and orange color—a warning signal to potential predators that Monarchs are full of poison (a process known as aposematism).

Despite this natural defense mechanism, Monarch’s are an endangered species due to shrinking populations of milkweed and nectar sources along their migration routes.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Monarchs migrate north from Mexico, during which adults stop off at refuge sites, feed on wildflower nectar, and lay eggs on milkweed. It is a multigenerational journey in that the butterfly that returns to Mexico is the great-grandparent of the Monarch that set off from Mexico. Shrinking populations of milkweed and wildflowers are impairing Monarchs’ ability to reproduce and depriving them of their food sources. Additionally, global warming has been triggering the Monarchs’ northern migration too early, before the milkweed has bloomed. In other cases, milkweed habitats have been lost to development, agriculture, pesticides, or otherwise removed. Sometimes, Monarch females are tricked into laying their eggs on black swallowswort or pale swallowwort, a non-native invasive plant that is closely related to milkweed, but lacks the nutrients and toxins Monarchs need to survive.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Purple coneflower (Echinacea)

Location: Washington Grasslands (13th–14th Streets), Hudson River Overlook (14th–15th Streets), 10th Avenue Square, Chelsea Grasslands, and the Wildflower Field

This plant provides crucial support to many pollen specialists along the eastern US, while its central disk shape offers a welcoming landing for bees, wasps, beetles, and flies. Coneflower stems provide important habitats for cavity-nesting bees. Females excavate the stems to lay a single egg inside and then stock it with a pollen ball known as “bee bread” that the developing larvae will eat until it is ready to emerge. These stems also provide these bees with a place to hibernate over winter.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Swamp azalea (Rhododendron viscosum)

Location: The Flyover (24th–27th Streets)

A late spring bloomer that lasts through July, this plant is pollinated by the azalea miner bee, a specialist pollinator equipped with scopa—pollen-carrying hairs—designed specifically to carry azalea pollen, which is a critical part of their diet. Only pollinators with long tongues or proboscises can access the nectar in these tubular flowers, which makes them a great spot to find hummingbirds, butterflies, and long-tongued bees such as carpenters, leafcutters, and bumblebees.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Blue giant hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)

Location: The Hudson River Overlook and Rail Track Walk at 30th Street

Distinguished by its anise-scented leaves, this late summer flowering plant attracts a wide range of pollinators, including bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles, and flower flies. It is a favorite of the Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Clair Grace bergamot (Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’)

Location: The Chelsea Thicket (21st Street)

A member of the mint family, this native perennial is a magnet for butterflies, hummingbirds, and various bees, including the Eastern carpenter bee and the metallic green spurred small carpenter bee. Male carpenter bees make their presence known with their loud buzzing and aggressive hovering, but lack stingers and are harmless. The females do have stingers, but will only sting if attacked. With their hardy bodies, carpenter bees are too large to access narrow nectar sources. Instead, they use their powerful jaws to cut into the flower, a practice known as “nectar robbing.”

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia)

Location: Chelsea Thicket (21st–22nd Streets)

Another wildly popular hot-spot for the pollinator population, this plant—which in the wild is found stabilizing shorelines and riverbanks—attracts a diverse community of pollinators and insects. This includes the organ pipe mud dauber wasp, which visits for nectar and hunts for spiders to stock its uniquely shaped nests.

CaptionPhoto by Ayinde Listhrop

Grow-Low aromatic sumac (Rhus aromatica ‘Gro-low’)

Location: Chelsea Thicket (21st Street) and Coach Passage (30th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues)

This plant serves as a host to several moth and butterfly larvae, including the tiny, bristle-legged moth. Only about a centimeter in size, the moth’s legs will appear like tiny branches as they raise them in the air during rest. The bristle-legged moth feeds on these fruits and flowers at night. Attracted to light, they can fall victim to light pollution.

You can learn much more about the High Line’s community of pollinators and the habitats that support them at our Nature in the City exhibit in the covered passage at 14th Street.

The High Line’s thriving ecosystems of plants and wildlife, and the ecological benefits they provide to New Yorkers, are only possible through the people-powered support of members like you. 100% of our annual operating budget is provided through donations. Want to help shelter, nourish, and support our pollinators? Consider making a donation and/or buying one of our pollinator T-shirts to support the High Line today!