The label ‘pollinator-friendly’ is submitted to scrutiny rather than accepted as an ecological fact. A systematic screening of 229 commercial seed mixes in Portugal examines taxonomy, origin, life-cycle traits, flowering duration and potential pollinator resources. Only 21 meet the authors' three-step criteria, which privilege native species, extended flowering and visual diversity. The finding exposes a mismatch between product description and demonstrable ecological provision; it does not prove that the remaining products fail under every possible field condition, nor does it measure pollinator response after planting. The epistemic move is from a marketed claim to a transparent classification with inspectable thresholds. Here the ecology of urban design intersects with procurement, public communication and the infrastructures through which purported environmental benefits are made believable. For an urban field instrument, this is a warning against treating the presence of a nominally green intervention as equivalent to effective habitat or socially experienced improvement. A planted verge must be observed as material composition, seasonal resource and designed claim.
