By: Claudine Arndt
My garden is my sanctuary. It is where I lose track of time, shake off whatever worries I’ve been carrying and relax into a state of wonder.
At some early point in my gardening journey decades ago, I became less interested in having a picture-perfect garden and began to focus more on having a purposeful garden filled with plants that attract insects, birds and butterflies – one that buzzes with life. Bit by bit, my interest shifted from cultivating prized but fussy plants like roses and foxgloves to growing more natives like bee balm and coneflower. Make no mistake, having a pollinator friendly garden doesn’t mean my garden lacks beauty. It is wildly beautiful and vibrant, as well as functional, offering the best of both worlds for me and all the busy creatures who visit.
What are pollinators and why are they important?
Pollinators are critters that help carry pollen from the male part of the flower to the female part of the same or another flower, including bees, butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, beetles, some birds like hummingbirds and even small mammals like bats. Some plants are self-pollinating, others rely on wind pollination, but for many plants, pollen must be transferred from one plant to another by an insect or animal to become fertilized and produce fruits, seeds and baby plants. This can happen when our pollinator friends visit flowers in search of food, shelter, materials for nests or a mate and accidentally pick up and carry pollen as they go about their activities, resulting in pollination. Other pollinators, including many bees, intentionally collect pollen. Truth be told, there’s nothing I find cuter than seeing a bee’s legs covered in yellow “pollen pantaloons”, as I like to call them.
It is widely known that most pollinator populations are declining, and rapidly. Populations are shrinking for many reasons, including pollution, pesticides, pests and diseases, dwindling habitat and climate change. This is both sad and distressing considering the critical role pollinators play in supporting all life, including the lives of human beings.
More than 80 percent of the world’s flowering plants need a pollinator to reproduce, which amounts to about 180,000 different types of plants. These plants form fertile and complex ecosystems, support wildlife, stabilize soils and provide us with oxygen, clean air and food. If you enjoy eating as much as I do, take note that it is estimated that one out of every three bites of food, including fruits, veggies, nuts, chocolate and spices, exists thanks to the help of pollinators. (Coffee, too, which certainly grabs my attention.) Without insect and animal pollination, we simply wouldn’t be able to grow enough food to eat, so if you haven’t already, you may want to thank a bee today.
Though the decline of pollinators is indeed a complicated, hairy problem tied to serious food security concerns, the upside to this hard conversation is that there are meaningful, yet relatively small, actions each of us can take to protect and support pollinator populations and maybe even start to turn this damaged ship around.
Let’s get planting!
Open Space Gardens in the Twin Cities, (formerly Sacred Space Gardens), is a landscape company specializing in designing, planting and maintaining gardens and outdoor spaces that thrive in harmony with nature. They focus on using native plants that increase pollinator habitat in urban areas and on creating more pollinator corridors, areas planted with pollinator friendly plants that are in close proximity to one another. This is important because some pollinators, especially bees, can’t actually fly very far and need “rest stops” along their journeys.
Gwen Ellis of Open Space Gardens explains, “The Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, Minnesota’s State Bee, can only fly about 2000 feet in one go, which is about two city blocks. Smaller bees like sweat bees can’t even fly that far, so if you have one native garden in someone’s yard, if there’s not another one within 2000 feet, it’s kind of useless. As a general rule, you need three little habitats in the space of two city blocks to accommodate most native pollinators.” The bottom line: it takes a village to provide enough of these corridors so pollinators can go flower hopping.
Some of Gwen’s favorite pollinator-friendly plants include purple coneflower, aster, milkweed (especially if you want Monarchs) and goldenrod (not to be confused with ragweed, a common cause of allergies). Gwen emphasizes, “Goldenrod supports more pollinator species than any other plant in Minnesota.” Coincidentally, Gwen’s favorites are also some of my favorites, although I would be remiss if I didn’t mention bee balm and native Liatris, commonly known as blazing star, which is positively a Monarch magnet.
About half of the clients Gwen meets with these days are interested in replacing traditional turf lawns, which provide no ecosystem value or service whatsoever besides holding soil in place, with pollinator friendly gardens or “bee lawns”. Bee lawns are diverse low-growing lawns that are a mixture of traditional turf grass seed, clover, creeping thyme and other low-growing native flowers. Gwen explains, “You can provide a lot more ecosystem services by providing a diverse garden with lots of different plants in it. It goes beyond providing food. Native plants provide habitat and places to lay eggs. Nobody is laying eggs in a plain old turf grass lawn.”
Offering a bit of encouragement, Gwen advises, “It doesn’t matter the size of the pollinator garden you plant; a little bit is a lot. Having a little pollinator garden, even if it’s just a stand of 10 purple coneflower plants, makes a huge difference to all sorts of pollinators. And then what matters is that there is another one close by that they can move to. Everybody who plants for pollinators is helping.”
As the days of summer unfold and more and more of the plants in my gardens burst into bloom, a symphony of humming and buzzing fills the air. I spend less time weeding and more time just being still and soaking in the beauty, sounds and entertaining antics of every creature who visits and goes about its work. Monarchs dance around my head, hummingbirds dart back and forth and chunky blimp-like bees clumsily bounce from flower to flower (and yes, put on their pollen pantaloons). I was once sitting very still and a hummingbird landed on my shoulder. I think it mistook my messy bun for a flower because it seemed to be trying to drink from my hair. I held my breath and felt like Snow White. The joy and awe these experiences bring me are immeasurable. Practically speaking, we can’t survive without pollinators, but I also wouldn’t want to. So I figure the least we can do is provide them with some food and shelter in the small corner of the world we share. I hope others will valiantly plant a stand of coneflower and join me in this effort.
Claudine Arndt is the Director of Membership and Minnesota Cooks™ local foods programming for Minnesota Farmers Union and has worked in the local foods arena since 2010. She is the co-creator of the farm-forward cookbook The Farmer and the Chef: Farm Fresh Minnesota Recipes and Stories and is the co-editor of Edible Minnesota.
