Pollinator Week 2025: The Change May Be in Your Backyard

Overview

National Pollinator Week has become a powerful platform to raise awareness about the vital role bees, butterflies, and other pollinators play in sustaining the natural world and our food systems. State action for pollinators has been foundational in moving this work forward and extends far beyond a single week. This blog explores one particular policy approach states are increasingly taking to drive change: empowering individuals, schools, and communities to create pollinator-friendly spaces.

Pollinator Week and State Action

Fourteen years ago, the U.S. Senate unanimously decided to designate the week of June 16-22 as Pollinator Week. Numerous states, such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan, have followed suit since then with similar proclamations. These proclamations are generally accompanied by educational programming and outreach to increase public awareness of the invaluable contributions pollinators make to humankind.

• Pollinator Benefits and Threats: Nearly 75% of food crops grown around the globe depend on pollinators, with the economic value of these crops estimated to be between $235-$577 billion per year. Like all native wildlife, a diversity of pollinator species is also important for maintaining healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. The use of harmful pesticides, unsustainable land use, and climate change have all led to declines in pollinator populations, which state action is seeking to address.

Outside of Pollinator Week, states across the country are passing legislation with tangible impacts for pollinators and pesticide reform. In 2025 alone, over 30 states introduced nearly 200 pieces of legislation, with 12 states already passing legislation this session. These policies range from eliminating the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, using special-issue license plates to fund pollinator protection, creating pollinator habitat alongside state highways, and increasing pesticide-use monitoring. 

Pollinator Conservation at Home

One policy approach in particular is gaining rapid bipartisan support: incentivizing private homeowners and property owners to create pollinator habitats. These “conservation at home” efforts are often focused on converting turf lawns to pollinator-friendly vegetation, which also reduces water and pesticide use, or constructing pollinator gardens in their backyards. 

• Why It Matters: Recent research shows that these home conservation initiatives are a highly effective strategy for protecting pollinators, as private residences comprise the bulk of green space in urban and suburban areas.

Case Study for Success: Minnesota’s Lawns to Legumes Program

In Minnesota, State Representative Rick Hansen’s HF 207 and the resulting Lawns to Legumes program has established a national model. Started as a pilot program in 2019, Lawns to Legumes provides small grants to private property owners looking to convert their front lawns into pollinator havens. The popularity of the program, with funds running out each year, has led to Lawns to Legumes becoming a permanent program. Since the program’s establishment, over 41,000 households have received grants to provide habitats for pollinators in their own backyards. 

• In Their Words – Minnesota State Rep. Rick Hansen: “Lawns2Legumes is the most popular environmental program in Minnesota this century. Demand continues to grow with broad-based support everywhere in the state. Teamwork makes the dream work!”

Similar efforts are spreading to other states since Minnesota’s landmark legislation

Grants for Pollinator Habitats

This year, Utah passed bipartisan legislation (H.B. 251) to make its pilot pollinator program permanent. Following a close ethos to Minnesota’s Lawns to Legumes, Utah’s Pollinator Habitats Program provides grants to private individuals for the planting of native pollinator-friendly plants or seeds on private or public lands. This year’s legislation also increased the state’s coverage of the grant to 75% of the cost, a rise from the state’s prior 25% cost coverage. New Jersey (A1885) and Illinois (HB5433) have also introduced legislation to provide these pollinator-friendly grants to homeowners.

Tax Incentives & HOA Communities

Meanwhile, a number of states have passed legislation with a different approach to incentivize pollinator habitat creation on residential and private lands. In 2024, Washington (SB 5934) chose to empower cities and counties to provide tax incentives and expedited permitting opportunities for developers who choose to include pollinator habitat in construction. 

Washington’s legislation (SB 5934) also prohibited homeowners associations (HOAs) from restricting landscaping aimed at creating pollinator habitat. A number of states have followed suit with Arkansas (HB1149), New York (S7358), and Wisconsin (SB 37) introducing legislation this session aimed at ensuring HOAs do not preempt pollinator habitat creation. New York’s legislation – the Low Impact Landscaping Act (S7358) – was introduced by State Senator Rachel May with the legislative intent of bolstering biodiversity in landscapes across the state by empowering homeowners to cultivate the plants and lawns they desire without penalty from HOAs.

• In Their Words – New York State Senator Rachel May: “Pollinators are central to our food systems and ecosystem health, but their populations are collapsing due to habitat loss, overuse of pesticides, and climate change. Often, we think about legislation to protect and promote pollinators as restrictions. These bills take another approach, as do many elements of my pollinators agenda. The Low Impact Landscaping Rights Act and the Garden Protection Act are all about letting New Yorkers be part of the solution by turning lawns into beautiful gardens and meadows.”

Pollinator Habitats at Schools

Lastly, in the 2025 session, Colorado (HB25-1061) created a bipartisan grant program for community schoolyard creations, with pollinator habitats included as an eligible funding option. 

Schoolyards with pollinator habitats allow children to have more experiences in nature, in a time when research finds youth are having fewer experiences with nature than prior generations. Such interactions with nature in youth are crucial to fostering positive human-nature relationships. And as Sir David Attenborough declared: “If children grow up not knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not understand it, and if they don’t understand it, they won’t protect it, and if they don’t protect it, who will?” 

Perhaps the biggest benefit for pollinators during this year’s Pollinator Week is allowing the nation’s youth to experience the wonders of nature through the bees and butterflies that visit our gardens. 

Learn More

Interested in learning more about pollinator and pesticide policy solutions? Check out NCEL’s Pollinator and Pesticide webpages.