2 MILLION BLOSSOMS deny the ground-nesting bees a safe place to live.
• And don’t forget the humans. If you fail to leave enough space for a game of chess or reading a book, you lose many of your garden pleasures. Small patches of lawn, a rope swing, a park bench, a hammock strung between trees are all perches where you can watch all the precious creatures you worked so hard to attract.
Asking the Right Questions In an ideal world, we could buy all the wild-type plants we desired to attract the creatures we love. But our real world is complex, and at times we may be forced to settle for nativars instead of the real thing. Rather than be discouraged, realize we’re riding a
Above: We need to work together, each in our own way, to assure a future rich with biodiversity and wonder.
Here’s a list of some best practices for keeping a “pretty-much” native garden:
•Do your homework to learn where the parent plant of a nativar originated. Retail chains may be shipping their products throughout the country, so it’s up to you to decide if your purchase is native to your area or not.
•Avoid plants that have been bred to have purple or reddish may not be as useful as less manipulated selections. Even leaves with green and white variegations are less nutritious than the plain green ones.
•Plan your garden so something is in bloom from spring through fall. Just as you prefer to eat every day, so do your pollinators. And remember, those weeds you grudgingly leave in place can help carry your pollinators through a rough patch.
•Don’t forget to underplant your trees with shade-tolerant species. Not every plant thrives in the bright sun, and those shady plants attract their own set of pollinators.
•Provide safe areas for insects to drink fresh water. If you live in mosquito country, keep the water’s surface moving with a waterfall or bubbler.
•Forget the pesticides. Toxic chemicals have no place in a pollinator garden.
• but avoid massive structures with thousands of holes. Too many individual bees living close together can attract bumper crops of parasites and predators. A few smaller nest boxes, widely spaced, are better than one large one.
•Think beyond nectar and pollen. If you are too much of a neatnik, compulsively dead-heading a bloom as soon as it softens, you will rob the birds of nutritious seeds. If you cover every square inch of ground with mulch, you will
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learning curve. The fact that we are asking questions like “What’s a nativar?” means we’ve come a long way to better understanding the forces that affect our environment. Once we understand the difference between natives and
choices. Even though the available plants may not be ideal, will work best for us individually, and buying based on fact rather than marketing hype.
References: 1. Tallamy DW and Darke R. (2009) Bringing nature home: how
you can sustain wildlife with native plants. Timber Press.
2. White, AS. (2016) From Nursery to Nature: Are native cultivars as valuable to pollinators as native species?
PollinatorGardens.org.
https://pollinatorgardens.org/2013/02/08/my-research/
3.
BudBurst.org. (2017) Help us monitor pollinator visits to native species and their cultivars. Nativars Research Project. https://
budburst.org/nativars
4. Waters, S. (2021) How do plant-pollinator communities respond to restoration? Quamish EcoResearch. https://www.quamasheco. com/networks-and-restoration
5. Marcoux, S. (2021) Here’s Why Every Garden Needs Pollinators— and Design-Centric Ways to Get Tem Tere.
Veranda.com
https://www.veranda.com/outdoor-garden/a35815974/ pollinator-garden/
Rusty Burlew is a master beekeeper in Washington State. She has been fascinated by honey bees since childhood and, in recent years, has become enthralled with the native bees that share pollination duty with honey bees. She has an undergraduate degree in agronomic crops and a master’s degree in environmental studies with an emphasis in pollination ecology. Besides writing for her website,
HoneyBeeSuite.com, Rusty has published in many magazines, frequently speaks about bee conservation, and has served as an expert witness in bee sting litigation.
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