Gardening for Pollinators

 How you can bring hummingbirds, bumble bees, and butterflies back into your neighborhood

by Kevin Munroe

In the last issue of the Potomac Flier, we talked about replacing English Ivy with shade-loving natives and all the biodiversity that could foster. If you read the newsletter carefully, you also learned about my new favorite week of the year: National Pollinator Week, created by the USDA to call attention to the importance of pollinators and pollinator conservation. It was celebrated for the first time ever this year, June 24-30; but don’t worry if you missed it! It’s best celebrated all summer long, and I will tell you how. What follows is my custom-made list for you of the very best native wildflowers for attracting pollinators, hummingbirds, and songbirds in the Northern Virginia area – guaranteed wildlife magnets.

But first, here’s news about some landscaping for wildlife that recently took place near you this spring: There are two properties you have to check out sometime this summer – Arlington Presbyterian Church and Colvin Run Mill Park. A small group of dedicated volunteers at both sites joined forces with our Audubon at Home program to create two truly inspirational habitat gardens. Elizabeth Freed, Ted Billings and Steve Tuttle were just a few of the lead members of their small church who turned an empty courtyard of turf into a buffet for songbirds and pollinators. Congressman Jim Moran stopped by to support their efforts and dig holes with us, and the National Audubon Society sent a crew down from New York to film the results. They captured a landscape featuring a wide selection of flowering native shrubs, designed to provide year-round fruit for songbirds and nectar sources for pollinators.

Another native garden that made it into Audubon’s filming was the pollinator garden at Colvin Run Mill Park. Designed by Katie Simenson with support from several volunteers, including Terry Liercke, Gary Gepford, and the kids from SAGA (Students Against Global Abuse), this special garden was created specifically to provide food for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, flower beetles, and other beneficial wildlife. In coordination with Jennifer Blackwood and Fairfax County Park Authority, the garden will soon have a sign and interpretive brochures to educate the thousands of visitors that tour the park every year.

Pollinator gardens such as these feature native plants with a variety of bloom times. They add color and interest to the landscape while also helping to conserve and attract native pollinators. Pollinators such as hummingbirds, bumble bees, day moths, and flower beetles keep gardens healthy and the landscape abuzz with activity. They are also essential to the production of billions of dollars of agricultural crops annually. Keeping the insects, mammals, and birds that pollinate our plants healthy is vital to every conservation issue you can imagine. Few habitats can maintain themselves without an army of pollinators to keep their plants reproducing.

Here are a few simple tips for creating a pollinator garden to bring color and wildlife to your yard:

• Use native plants and provide a variety of heights, colors, and bloom times.
• Minimize or eliminate pesticide use.
• Create shelter: bee boxes and twig bundles, brush shelters, dense shrubs, standing dead trees, pocket meadows.
• Include water: shallow containers, wet sand or mud.
• Provide larval food plants for caterpillars.
• Allow a few wild patches and unmanicured natural areas.
• Full sun should cover at least half of your pollinator garden site. Provide basking structures (rocks, fences, logs, etc.).

Two excellent websites for learning more about pollinator gardening (including conservation alerts on bees) are www.pollinator.org/pollinator_week.htm and www.nappc.org. Both sites provide fact sheets for gardeners and land managers, and as well as pollinator-themed curricula for teachers.

Sun-loving Native Plants for Attracting Pollinators in Northern Virginia

(Several of these vines and groundcovers were also on last issue’s list of shade-lovers, due to their tolerance for different light conditions. There’s no excuse for not planting them!)

Shrubs: Shrubby Saint Johnswort, Sumac, Elderberry, Summersweet, Meadowsweet, Steeplebush, Wild Blue Indigo, Silky and Gray-stemmed Dogwood, Highbush Blueberry, Button Bush, Hercules’ Club

Vines: Coral Honeysuckle, Passionflower, Carolina Jasmine, Cross Vine

Wildflowers: Goldenrods, Wild Bergamot, Cardinal Flower, Pickerel Weed, Mountain Mint, Joe-Pye Weed, Ironweed, Wild Senna, Cup Plant, Purple Coneflower, New England and New York Aster, Blue Giant and Purple Giant Hyssop, Milkweeds (Common, Purple, Swamp and Butterflyweed), Showy Tick Trefoil, Dogbane, Wild Geranium, Golden Alexander, Helianthus

Groundcovers: Creeping Mint, Violets, Creeping and Moss Phlox, Wild Strawberry

Look for native plants at the following nurseries:

• Nature By Design: www.nature-by-design.com
• Hyla Brook Farm: www.hylabrookfarm.com
• Merrifield Garden Center: www.merrifieldgardencenter.com
• North Creek Nurseries: www.northcreeknurseries.com
• Sunshine Farm & Gardens: www.sunfarm.com