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As we enter spring, I’m ready, once again, for my own personal transformation. For me, spring is not just a time for thawing, but a time for learning, experimenting and daring to try new things. It’s a time for resolutions (it has never been winter), a season of rejuvenation and, if I allow myself, even a dash of hope.
This year, I’m starting a garden from scratch – absolute scratch, if that’s even a thing. All that’s there now are slabs of concrete and a few decorative bushes. My goal for the coming growing season is to turn this concrete jungle into a productive veggie garden with a pollinator twist.
This is the third gardening design project I’m embarking on and my fifth year of gardening (albeit intermittently it’s been eight years), but the first one I’m starting from the first drop of compost.
So you could say I’m on a learning bender, not driven by doing it right (as if there is such a thing in gardening), but by doing right by it. And for me, this means learning to work with nature, not in spite of it. Which leads me back to the topic of this post and how I feel that it’s every gardener’s duty to give back to the ecosystem by building pollinator-friendly gardens.
My preferred way of learning is by immersing myself in books. I’ve been reading and taking notes like there’s no tomorrow. And when it comes to saving pollinators from extinction, it often feels like there is no tomorrow.
But I’ve also been learning from expert-led workshops. The latest I attended was an online live class organized by Cambridgeshire Beekeepers’ Association and led by Sarah Holdsworth from Bee Happy Plants.
The recording of the class is still available for members of the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers’ Association, so I don’t want to give away too much of the specific information generously offered by Sarah. Joining as an associate member is very affordable, and this class alone is worth the price. But they run a few classes a month (online, nowadays) so that definitely makes it worth it.
3 Things I learned about planting a garden for pollinators
1. Overwintering a messy garden is good for pollinators.
This is a mistake I made with my first garden, mostly because I didn’t know any better. At the end of the growing season and before the first frost (sometime in early November in Pennsylvania), we would pull out everything from the garden and turn over the soil. This was before we had learned about the benefits of no-dig gardening, and the main drive behind our action was “this is what we’ve seen others do.”
Sarah says we often think of our gardens as another room in our house, an extension of our living space that needs to be tidy, neat and decluttered. But our gardens are much more than that. They are ecosystems where we can practice how to live and let live.
Yes, it may not be pleasant for my ‘tidiness-sensors’ to look outside in the garden on a cold winter day and see how messy and dead everything looks. But it’s good for the insects that burrow in the debris left behind by my growing season.
A few areas that bees like to nest in, and that we should leave undisturbed, include: piles of leaves, old bramble stems, piles of moss, fine grasses, walls of ivy, glass clipping piles and hollow plant stems.
2. Add a source of water to your garden for pollinators.
Probably the only pool that I’ll ever build, I’ve built for bees during a particularly droughty summer a few years ago. I used an empty container with a few pieces of driftwood and a few sturdy sage leaves floating on the surface for bees to rest on while they’re having a gulp of water.
Good to know my intuition was correct. A pollinator-friendly garden needs a source of water with a landing pad for bees – either rocks, wood, shells, gravel, or any other ornamental element that will allow the bees to rest and rehydrate.
However, don’t leave out a pond with steep sides, as the bees will drown if they have nothing to crawl on top of to fly away. Not all of us have room for a pond, but even a tap will do in a pinch, as long as there’s some gravel under the tap for bees to land on.
3. Plan for a “flowering year” for pollinators
We don’t feed ourselves just in the summer, and neither do bees. That’s why we need to plan flowering plants for each season. Sarah is in the North Hemisphere, so she divided the flowering year into four parts:
Early to late spring (March to May)
Plan for flowering plants from these families:
Boraginaceae (the borage family)
Grossulariaceae (the currant family)
Ericacea (the heath family)
Rosaceae (the rose family)
Salicaceae (the willow family)
The June Gap – a natural gap between spring-flowering plants and summer-flowering plants
Choose plants from these families:
Asteraceae (the aster/daisy family)
Boraginaceae (the borage family)
Ericacea (the heath family)
Lamiaceae (the mint/sage family)
Malvaceae (the mallow family)
Rosaceae (the rose family)
Early to late summer (July to October)
Plan for flowering plants from these families:
Araliaceae
Asteraceae (the aster/daisy family)
Crassulaceae (the sedum/stonecrop family)
Ericacea (the heath family)
Lamiaceae (the mint/sage family)
Early to late winter (November to February)
Choose plants from these families:
Betulaceae (the birch/hazel family)
Buxaceae (the boxwood family)
Caprifoliaceae (the honeysuckle family)
Ericacea (the heath family)
Ranunculaceae (the buttercup/hellebore family)
We also need shrubs and trees in pollinator gardens, not just annuals and perennials. Shrubs will provide more forage than a few beds of perennials or annuals, and they’re also a good hiding spot for pollinators in the cold season.
Plant perennials in drifts (large patches) because wild bees choose to nest near drifts which are left undisturbed.
There are so many ways to plant for pollinators, depending on your zone, your climate and what plants are native to your area. I’m adding a few books below to help you start your research.
Extra resources to learn more about planting for pollinators:
Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife from the National Wildlife Federation by David Mizejewski
Native Plant Gardening for Birds, Bees and Butterflies: Upper Midwest by Jaret C. Daniels
Pollinator Gardening for the South: Creating Sustainable Habitats by Danesha Seth Carley and Anne M. Spafford
The Southeast Native Plant Primer: 225 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden by Larry Mellichamp and Paula Gross
The Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America’s Bees by Joseph S. Wilson and Olivia J. Messinger Carril
100 Plants to Feed the Monarch: Create a Healthy Habitat to Sustain North America’s Most Beloved Butterfly published by The Xerces Society
Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape by Owen Wormser
Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide, Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies by The Xerces Society and Dr. Marla Spivak
Bee Native! Flower Power: An Easy Guide to Choosing Native Flowers for your Garden to Help Pollinators. (Midwest Edition) by Flora C Caputo
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