This week is National Pollinator Week, and the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is marking it the way it has for the past four years: by giving away free seeds. Through June 28, Tennessee residents can order free milkweed seed packets through TDOT’s Project Milkweed initiative at tnpollinators.org/milkweed. New this year, alongside the familiar Red and Common Milkweed varieties, is a native herb and flower blend — ten species of native Tennessee plants, including the state’s two official wildflowers.
It might sound like a gardening story. It is also a food story.
NO POLLINATOR’S, NO FOOD
Roughly one out of every three bites of food you eat exists because a pollinator visited a plant. Bees, butterflies, beetles, bats, and birds transfer pollen between flowering plants, enabling the fertilization that produces fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Without them, most of what fills a Tennessee garden — squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, melons, berries — simply doesn’t fruit.
That’s not a distant abstraction for Moore County. Local farmers’ markets, backyard gardens, and small-scale agriculture across the region depend on healthy pollinator populations. The vegetables showing up at the Lynchburg Farmer’s Market right now — the ones hitting peak season just as the summer solstice passes — got there because pollinators were working while most people weren’t paying attention.
The problem is that pollinator populations have been declining for decades. TDOT launched its Pollinator Habitat Program in 2017 in response to sharp drops in pollinator species tied to habitat loss, pesticide exposure, pests, and disease. The monarch butterfly alone has lost more than 90 percent of its population since 1992, in large part because milkweed — the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat and the only host for monarch eggs — has largely vanished from the American landscape as roadsides and rural areas have been developed, farmed, or mowed down.
ONE BACKYARD AT A TIME
Project Milkweed is TDOT’s effort to rebuild that lost habitat one backyard at a time. Last year the program distributed more than 93,000 seed packets to Tennessee residents, fulfilling over 18,000 individual requests. The theory is straightforward: if enough people plant milkweed in enough yards, gardens, fence lines, and open spaces across the state, monarch populations have a fighting chance to recover.
The program is a multi-agency partnership between TDOT, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency — the same TWRA that has been tracking black bear movements in Moore County this summer. Its reach has grown every year since it launched.
This year’s new native seed blend is a meaningful expansion of the program’s scope. Where past years focused exclusively on milkweed for monarch habitat, the 2026 blend broadens the benefit to the full range of pollinators — bees, beetles, and butterflies beyond the monarch — by offering plants that provide nectar, shelter, and breeding habitat across the season.
WHAT’S IN THE 2026 NATIVE BLEND
The ten-variety native blend is available this year alongside the milkweed packets and includes:
• Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa)
• Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
• Purple Coneflower — Tennessee’s state wildflower (Echinacea purpurea)
• Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
• Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis)
• Lance-Leaf Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata)
• Passion Flower — Tennessee’s state wildflower (Passiflora)
• Blanket Flower (Gaillardia aristata)
• White Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
• Firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella)
All of these are native perennials, meaning they’ll return year after year once established. Plant them in April or May after the last frost. Milkweed seeds are best planted in the fall — late September through early November — so they receive the cold period needed for successful germination. Seeds ordered this week will be shipped in late summer to early fall, arriving right on time.
HOW TO ORDER
Orders are limited to one per person or household and are free to Tennessee residents. Each milkweed packet contains 20 seeds, enough to cover a roughly 3-by-3-foot area. The native blend is available only alongside a milkweed seed request — you’ll need to order both. Supplies are available while they last, so ordering early in the week is advisable.
Orders can be placed at tnpollinators.org/milkweed through June 28. TDOT is also encouraging participants to share photos of their plantings on social media using the hashtag #TDOTProjectMilkweed.
A small packet of seeds in a Moore County garden won’t save the monarch butterfly on its own. But pollinators don’t migrate in the abstract — they move from yard to yard, field to field, following bloom corridors that either exist or don’t. Every garden that plants native species is one more stop on a route that matters. •
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