10 Tips for Making Your Garden a Sanctuary for Pollinators
With Climate Disruption beginning to make noticeable changes in the environment of North America and around the World, it’s essential that gardeners make a concerted effort to help support pollinators. Collectively, if all of us gardeners focus on enhancing the cultivated areas of our urban, suburban and rural areas of our country with the right mix of flowering plants, we can make a huge difference. Here are 10 tips that can be done to make your garden and those of your friends and neighbors, a sanctuary for pollinators by providing food and habitat.
1) Plant A Wide Variety of Plant Types
Use a wide diversity of plant types and varieties to make your garden more resilient from invasive foreign insect pests and provide a wider spectrum of pollinator-friendly species. Make sure you have a good mix of regionally suitable trees, shrubs, perennials, re-seeding annuals, ornamental grasses, vines, and cold-hardy succulents.
2) Have Less Lawn and More Flowering Plants
It is estimated that there are over 40 million acres of lawn in this country. Take out some or all of your lawn and replace it with flowering perennials, groundcovers, flowering shrubs and trees. Flowering plants are low-care lawn alternatives that support pollinators and beneficial insects. Lawns, on the other hand, are extremely unproductive in terms of providing habitat and are the largest recipient of agricultural chemicals such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers that contaminate our soil and water.
3) Plant a Mix of Native and Old World Plants
Plant as many native plants (found growing naturally in North America) as possible, especially species found in your region. Native plants provide “natural nectar” that feed butterflies, moths, pollinating flies, bumblebees and other native bees as well as hummingbirds. Strive to plant fewer common Old World plants (plants native to Europe, Asia and South Africa) and replace them with natives. I recommend a ratio of 70-80% natives to 20-30% Old World species to provide the right mix of flowers to attract a wide variety of pollinating insects and hummingbirds.
4) Plant More Native Trees and Shrubs
Make it a point to plant more native trees and shrubs; unfortunately, non-native woody plant species greatly outnumber native species in the nursery trade. So seek out native woody plants as they are essential for providing food for moth and butterfly caterpillars while Old World woody plants do not. Without caterpillars, there will be no butterflies and moths to pollinate the plants.
5) Plant to Provide Flowers Over the Whole Growing Season
Learn when plants bloom so you can plant to have flowers from early spring through fall. So many of our gardens are front loaded with spring bloomers, with far fewer, if any, late summer and fall bloomers. To keep pollinators coming to your yard, don’t just service breakfast (spring blooming). Be sure you’re providing lunch (summer blooming) and dinner (fall blooming) too.
6) Plant Their Favorite Plants from the Old World
Honeybees* live in large colonies and are extremely competitive with solitary native bees. Honeybees generally outnumber native bees in a big way. So plant Old World species that attract honeybees such that native bees (many of which need nectar from specific native plants) will have nectar available from their preferred native plants.
Old World flowers that are favorites of honeybees include flowering bulbs like crocus, daffodils, tulips, herbs like lavender, oregano, rosemary, ornamental perennials like sage (Salvia), catmint (Nepeta), calamint (Calamintha), ornamental onion (Allium) as well as woody plants like lilacs, blue mist spirea (Caryopteris), Russian sage (Perovskia), flowering crabapples, cherries, hawthorns, and fruiting trees are all excellent.
In regions like the Intermountain West where they are not invasive, plant Butterfly Bush (Buddleia) and Chaste tree (Vitex) for their invaluable summer nectar. Out East, plant new Buddleia cultivars that have been bred to be sterile and won’t re-seed themselves. (* Honeybees are Old World insects from Europe, Asia and Africa and often feed on Old World flowers first.)
7) Provide Water
Have a reliable water source in your yard. Hummingbirds need a dripping or gentle spray of water from a fountain. Butterflies need a mud puddle. Bees like a birdbath with still water.
8) Provide Nesting Sites for Bees
Provide nesting places for native bees. Use native bee nesting tube bundles placed on protected east-facing walls and fences. Where possible cold-hardy leave a snag (dead tree) to provide additional nesting sites for bumblebees and other native bee species. Leave open ground, uncovered by weed barrier cloth or mulch as many native bees nest in ground burrows.
9) Garden Organically
Garden organically as best as you can. Chemical fertilizers are the primary source of nitrogen pollution in our streams and rivers. All of this nitrogen flows to the oceans where algal blooms are poisoning their waters. Chemical insecticides and herbicides that kill insects and weeds are injurious to humans and our pets and contaminate the environment. Pollinators are highly sensitive to chemical poisons.
10) Never Use Systemic Insecticides
NEVER use systemic neonicotinoids insecticides. These horrible poisons will translocate into the flowers contaminating the nectar and will kill or weaken pollinators that sip from the tainted flowers! Go online and learn what common systemic insecticide brands contain neonicotinoids.
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