Put Some Buzz in Your Landscape by Helping Pollinators

April 14th, 2015

Somewhere along the road of growing up, many – if not most – children learn that bees are evil buzzing creatures that will sting you if given half a chance.

A bee is hard at work pollinating this butterfly milkweed.

They’re pests to be swatted, certainly not to be welcomed or even tolerated in any civilized back yard.

So over the past two or three generations, humans have done an effective job at knocking back bee populations, not to mention many other bugs that dare to fly or crawl around our roses and azaleas.

It turns out our yard-sanitizing efficiency may be coming back to bite us instead of sting us.

Bee, butterfly and other pollinator populations have dwindled to the point where it’s starting to threaten food production and the prices tied to that.

Even at home, gardeners are starting to notice fewer berries on their ornamental plants and slimmer yields of tomatoes, cucumbers, blueberries and squash.

“I don’t believe the average person knows that moths, flies and native bees play a major role in pollination or the welfare of our ecosystem,” says Connie Schmotzer, a York County Extension educator who also works with Penn State University’s Center for Pollinator Research. “Getting folks to understand that very few insects do economic damage is difficult, especially in the face of the pesticide advertising out there.”

On the flip side, she cites research showing that one out of every three bites of food we eat can be traced to the work of pollinators.

Some of the pollinators’ plight is the result of the rampant roadside and backyard spraying we’ve been doing since World War II.

But loss of habitat is at least as big of a factor.

According to Monarch Watch, a non-profit organization set up to protect the monarch butterfly, up to 6,000 acres of U.S. land per day is converted to development.

That means acreage the size of Yellowstone National Park each year is changing from forests and meadows to office buildings, roads, parking lots and housing developments.

Even most home landscapes are of little value to pollinators because they’re heavily planted in lawn (with bee-attracting clover killed off) and in a relative few non-native plants (which pollinators can’t or won’t eat).

“After World War II, expanses of lawn and shrubs in large mulched beds became our model,” says Schmotzer, “partly because we had the chemicals to maintain it, and easy-to-propagate plants were needed for the expanding subdivisions. That aesthetic is what we grew up with and are comfortable with.

“That was OK when we still had many natural areas. But today, development on the East Coast has taken most of our natural areas, and the land that is left is often overrun with invasives such as Japanese barberry and bittersweet.”

What to do?

Assuming we can’t put things back the way they were, one alternative is to aid pollinators one yard at a time.

That’s led to an emerging concept called “pollinator gardening.”

Maryann Skubecz working in her pollinator friendly garden.

Maryann Skubecz looks at it almost as a civic duty.

Skubecz is a Cumberland County Master Gardener who was one of the state’s first gardeners to have her back yard in Hampden Twp. certified as a Pollinator Friendly Garden.

This is a Penn State-sponsored program in which gardeners are cited for meeting four key pollinator-protecting guidelines – providing food sources, providing water, providing shelter and protecting pollinator habitats.

More than 430 Pennsylvania gardeners now have certified Pollinator Friendly Gardens, including the governor’s residence in Harrisburg.

“The strength of a community depends upon good citizens,” says Skubecz. “We may be good citizens by volunteering to be a fireman, picking up trash along the side of the road, or shoveling snow for an elderly neighbor.

“We also live in environmental communities that have been greatly altered by human development. I feel that as good citizens, we need to do our part to restore some of that community. We can do that by planting pollinator gardens.”

Adds Dr. Douglas Tallamy, author of 2007’s “Bringing Nature Home” and co-author (along with Rick Darke) of 2014’s “The Living Landscape:” “We have forced the plants and animals that evolved in North America to depend more and more on human-dominated landscapes.”

The central message of both “The Living Landscape” and the Pollinator Friendly Garden program is that home gardeners are a pollinator’s best hope for survival.

Among the practical tips for doing that:

1.) Knock off spraying. If you must use an insecticide, go with the most targeted and least toxic approach to control the pest, such as oils and soaps. Spray in the evening when pollinators aren’t active.

2.) Plant more native plants – especially ones most helpful to pollinators. Keep woods, meadows, wetlands and other natural areas on your property intact and rid them of non-native invasives such as tree of heaven, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle and multiflora rose that can choke out more pollinator-friendly natives.

3.) Plant more variety. Diversity is much better than groupings of the same few plants over and over again, especially when care is given to spread bloom times throughout the season so there’s always something for both larvae and flying adults to eat. The Xerxes Society, a butterfly conservation group, recommends at least 15 to 25 different species per yard.

Let some spent flowers on your plants as a seedy food source for birds.

4.) Don’t be such a neatnik. Tolerate cosmetic and temporary plant damage. Let leaves break down in landscape beds. Don’t deadhead all of the spent flowers ASAP. And wait until spring to remove frost-killed grasses and perennials; the cover helps overwintering beneficial insects.

5.) Give pollinators a water source. Birdbaths and water features are two good ways. Shallow puddles are also excellent if you refresh the water every few days to avoid mosquitoes.

Susan Wilder, a former president of the West Shore’s Penn-Cumberland Garden Club, says pollinator gardens aren’t “messy” or “out of control” as many people believe.

She says many of the vegetable gardeners at the Ames True Temper Community Garden that Penn-Cumberland oversees have taken to planting natives such as purple coneflowers, goldenrod, bee balm and black-eyed susan, plus pollinator-friendly herbs such as thyme, lavender and dill around their plots.
“This not only makes the garden area a beautiful oasis in what used to be a (railroad) track-side wasteland,” Wilder says, “but by attracting pollinators, the production of crops is enhanced.”

She says bluebird houses have been added to the site to attract pest-bug-eating bluebirds, a natural way to keep bugs from ravaging the vegetables.

Skubecz also uses the “O” word to describe her landscape.

“My pollinator garden is an oasis for bees, butterflies, and birds,” she says. “I prefer to think of my garden as informal and not messy… think relaxed, lively, colorful, textured, and changing with the seasons.”

Addressing the other big concern some people have about attracting pollinators, she says she’s never been stung by a bee.

“I’ve found that if I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me,” she says.

   Some of the best native plants for attracting pollinators to central-Pennsylvania yards:

Trees and shrubs: oak, black cherry, willow, birch, crabapple, blueberry, red maple, pine, hickory, hawthorn, spruce, linden, rose, beech, redbud, arrowwood viburnum, chokecherry, spicebush, silky or gray dogwood, serviceberry, New Jersey tea, buttonbush, summersweet, Virginia sweetspire.

Perennials for sun: aster, goldenrod, sunflower, Joe Pye weed, violet, hardy geranium, black-eyed susan, iris, milkweed, penstemon, phlox, threadleaf coreopsis, bee balm, cardinal flower, mountain mint, purple coneflower, columbine, liatris, anise hyssop, sundrops, sneezeweed, Culver’s root, heart-leaved alexander, nodding onion.

Perennials for shade: sedge, woodland phlox, blue lobelia, jack-in-the-pulpit, indian pink, wood aster, Dutchman’s breeches.

For more information on pollinator gardening, see the Extension Service’s online primer.