Design your yard and community for pollinators

Pollinators are necessary for many of our flowering plants. We can and should make the effort to attract our native pollinators by stopping all landscape-wide pesticides and by planting a wide variety of native plants arranged in ways that make it easier for pollinators to thrive. Some can only fly a short distance to find nectar, which is a viscous, sugar-rich liquid produced by plants to attract pollinating animals. Pollinators are mostly insects, but they could also be birds or other animals.

Pollinator distances. A graphic by Pollinator Pathways.

What is a Pollinator Pathway?

Public and private pesticide-free corridors of native plants that provide nutrition and habitat for pollinating insects and birds. Even the smallest green spaces, like flower boxes and curb strips, can be part of a pathway. For many more resources and to be part of the solution, join https://www.pollinator-pathway.org/

We have posted many pollinator articles on this blog over the years. See below for links to of some of our favorites. Many were written by Beatriz Moisset, a pollinator expert who has left this realm, but we're sure she's still busy helping pollinators in some way.

Why I love the Florida Native Plant Society

Florida Native Plant Society

Previously, I talked about our native plant resources in Florida including the Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS), this time I’ll provide more details on how much I like FNPS.

My local chapter (Ixia in Jacksonville) holds informative meetings with expert speakers on a wide range of topics relating to native plants or habitats, offers plants for sale or raffle at most meetings, runs field trips, and participates in outreach programs. Our chapter has developed an “Alter-Natives” brochure for northeastern Florida that lists native plants to replace those frequently sold (and sometimes invasive) plants. Here’s a link to a pdf file of the brochure. We’ve adopted a small park in Jacksonville called Native Park, but ironically it was filled with non-native plants–we have made this into a showcase for native plants in an urban setting. In short, our chapter is filled with smart, active and caring folks doing important work as a group and as individuals.  Here’s a link to find an FNPS chapter near you.

The Annual FNPS Conferences

While the chapter is great fun, the annual state-wide FNPS conference is my chapter on steroids!  I’ve been to two conferences now and I find that them to be even more stimulating and inspiring.  There are 37 chapters around the state: so there we are all together each of us talking about our projects and learning from speakers and local field trips.  I took some photos and will provide a short tour of the 2012 conference which took place on May 19th to 22nd near Orlando.

Native plant vendors display their plants for sale under the live oak tress.

Pollinator-Friendly Lawns

Lawn and more lawn. © Catherine Zimmerman

Ordinarily a lawn is a desert, unwelcoming to wildlife from tiny insects to birds. The total surface of lawns in the United States has been estimated with the help of satellite technology as somewhere between 40,000 and 75,000 square miles, somewhere between the size of New York State and that of Texas. Some gardeners have started replacing large sections of grass ground cover with garden plants or meadow grasses in an effort to create beneficial habitat for wildlife. Many articles in “Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens” discuss the advantages of reducing the size of lawns and provide abundant suggestions on how to do it (see references below).

The never-ending story of a native landscape

Plants are alive. They grow, they multiply, and they die. So those perfect-looking landscape plans or meticulously groomed gardens in magazines and online are mere snapshots in time. The reality is that *things* are always changing and that’s a good thing. To see how much my front landscape has changed over the years, read  From lawn to woods: a retrospective. So this is the next phase in the never-ending story…

Time to remove some lawn: those yuccas have grown and
had leaned over the lawn edge.
The fall leaves will make a great mulch.

The trip along the lawn edge

The edging trip around the edge of the lawn is a good opportunity to remove more lawn and to edit the plants that have become too rambunctious, i.e. weeds.

When I started this go-round in late October, it had been very dry for us–1/2″ instead of our average 3.86″– October is the last of our 5 wet months. The dryness made it easy to remove the grass and other plants.

Pollinator Gardens do Double Duty

Syrphid flies. Pollinators and biological controls. Their larvae feed on aphids
© Beatriz Moisset

More gardeners are learning about pollinators and creating habitat for them. It warms my heart when I see them selecting plants beneficial to pollinators, converting portions of the lawn into flower plots, cutting down on pesticides, and creating the right conditions for pollinators’ nests. Many gardeners are learning to be grateful to pollinators for their services. Some are familiarizing themselves with the most common ones. This is a healthy trend.

Bring Back the Native Pollinators! Honey bees are not enough

A long-horned bee on sunflower
© Beatriz Moisset

I keep pondering the questions I posed in my previous post (Will We all Die if Honey Bees Disappear?): how did we manage to become so dependent on a single species of pollinators, the domestic honey bee? What happened to the native ones that populated the entire continent and performed the pollination of the native plants? In my search for answers I stumbled upon an old publication of the Department ofAgriculture and finally began to find some answers.

Here is an excerpt from the USDA document prepared by the Division of Bee Culture in 1942: “The Dependence of Agriculture on the Beekeeping Industry—a Review.”

Will We all Die if Honey Bees Disappear?

Bumble bees have been pollinating sunflowers, an important crop for Native Americans,
long before the arrival of the honey bee
© Beatriz Moisset

One third of our food needs to be pollinated by insects. Honey bees are responsible for most of it. With 4,000 species of bees in North America plus numerous other pollinators of different stripes, how did we manage to become so dependent on just a single species? We know how important it is to diversify our portfolio, our diet, and our crops and gardens. So, what were we thinking?

From lawn to woods: a retrospective

Spring 2014: a pinxter azalea in the front meadow.

Then and now…

I posted the above photo of my pinxter azalea (Rhododendron canescens) a while back with the comment that with the exception of the trees next to the pond (behind the top sprout on the right), this area used to be lawn. People were really surprised and asked for more details and more information about how it was transformed, so I thought I’d share the history here. (Update: I also used this photo on the cover of my book, The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape.)