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Don't Hate, Pollinate!

No question about it, the gardening buzz about planting to feed and nurture pollinators continues to get louder. That's because of concerted efforts, from local symposiums and garden club programs to a presidential proclamation in June 2015 and a high level federal interagency task force mapping out strategies to promote the health of honeybees and other pollinators.

It's not just honeybees that are critical to our nation's economy, food security, and environmental health. So are native bees, hover flies, and other insect pollinators, birds and bats, according to Dr. John Holden, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Our national fight to protect these pollinators is laid out on the White House website, www.whitehouse.gov. Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year, and helps ensure that our diets include ample fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

Pollinators play a vital role for Connecticut's gardens and agriculture, and also for the reproduction of our vast diversity of native flowering plants, according to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. CAES scientists participate in national, regional, and state projects measuring the exposure of honeybees to pesticides in pollen and the movement of pesticides into the pollen and nectar of flowering plants.

For a Gorgeous Garden, Feed the Bees

So what's a Connecticut gardener to do? The short answer is to plant a variety of flowering plants that provides pollen and nectar for pollinating insects. A 10-page fact sheet by Dr. Kimberly Stoner, CAES, includes lists of herb, ornamental, and cut flower plants that bees like and need to survive. These recommendations are based on bee counts at 10 Connecticut vegetable farms.

It's also important to garden without pesticides, including neonicitinoids. This class of insecticides that are chemically similar to nicotine has become widely used because they are less toxic to birds and mammals than organophosphates and carbamate insecticides. But the "neo-niks" have been linked to honeybee colony collapse disorder and their effectiveness on insects has been tied to declining bird populations that need the insects to survive.

Aim to provide a long season of continuous bloom, recommends Stoner, to attract and support both high numbers of bees and high diversity of pollinating insect species. Honeybees and bumble bees are generalists with a long season, from early spring when new queens are establishing nests to fall when they are storing up fats for overwinter survival. Other bees are specialists, looking for one species that blooms for a short time. Solitary mason and digging bees are in this category.

Maureen Hasely-Jones, the English Garden Lady who has delighted gardening fans for years with her radio show, lectures, and newspaper articles, recommends a landscape full of herbaceous bloomers and flowering trees.

"The best flowers for bees are single flowers; they provide more nectar and pollen than double flowers," she says. "Asters, echinacea, sunflowers, asclepias or milkweeds, penstemon, red hot poker, salvia—there are so many."

An adamant organic gardener who comes from a long line of gardeners in the UK and took her formal horticultural training at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Surrey, Hasely-Jones also recommends a variety of shallow-blossomed bloomers that make it easier for pollinating insects to get to the pollen. Think of daisies, zinnias, Queen Anne's lace, and yarrows.

"Choose blue, purple, and yellow; bees find these colors the most appealing," she says.

"Both wild and honeybees, which have interbred to create other species, like plants in the mint family."

Nepeta, salvia, monarda, or bee balm are mint family members (Lamiaceae) that won't take over the garden like culinary mint varieties do. Lavender is a good choice, with its color and clumping growth form.

"These flowers need plenty of sun,' says Hasely-Jones. "So if you have a shady garden you can always let in more light by raising the canopy of your trees, remove some branches to let in more sunlight, and increase the choice of plants you can grow."

Stoner recommends planting a single species in clumps at least three feet in diameter so pollinators can find them more easily. Research also shows that having a diversity of at least eight or more species of plants increases abundance and diversity of pollinators, so feel free to load up your beds.

Don't forget the importance of less showy flowers, including clover, which unfortunately is purged from most lawns with the use of broadleaf herbicides, or gets chopped off by mowing before it can bloom.

Landscape designer Larry Weaner, a nationally recognized leader in bringing together fine garden design and ecological restoration, encourages homeowners to think beyond individual pollinator gardens to functioning full landscapes.

"The fact that people want to do pollinator gardens is a good first step," says Weaner, who spoke about meadows at two days of pollinator workshops organized by Stoner at CAES in February. "The next step is to start thinking about the landscape as a whole, think about the functioning element in the landscape, not just something pretty to look at."

Based in the Philadelphia suburb of Glendale, Weaner has designed many Connecticut landscapes, from shoreline to the hills. He presents an annual New Directions in the American Landscape symposium at Connecticut College in New London for landscape architects and designers. He also spoke at the 2016 Connecticut Master Gardeners Symposium held at Connecticut College in March.

Nancy DuBrule-Clemente, owner of Natureworks in Northford, loads up her garden shop with a wide range of pollinator-friendly plants.

"You can have a garden that looks wild, but is purposely planned to be low-maintenance," she says. "Include native grasses, which ground-nesting bumble bees need, and do less deadheading. You want to leave the stems—tunnel-nesting native bees lay their eggs in the hollow stems."

DuBrule-Clemente recommends growing native elderberry, which has white umbrel flowers for bees. Colorful berries are a healthy antioxidant for humans if the birds don't eat them all, and the hollow stems provide a haven for nesting wild bees.

"Native elderberry is a real plant with a purpose," she says. "And it looks good."

Want more bee-friendly info? Start with Planting Flowers for Bees in Connecticut, by Kimberly Stoner, Ph.D, at www.bit.ly/plantingflowersforbees.