Webinar: Reimagining Greenspace for Pollinators
June 21, 2022
Amanda Sciandra:
Hello. Welcome. I'm Amanda Sciandra, a public programs coordinator at the National Museum of Natural History. It is my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program, Re-imagining Green Space for Pollinators. I'm a brown-haired woman wearing a black shirt and yellow beehive earrings, sitting in front of a full bookshelf and a window with a plant. On your screen right now is an image of a butterfly, as well as the title and date of today's program. We are so excited to be celebrating Pollinator Week here at the National Museum of Natural History. It's a week to get to know and admire pollinators of all kinds, acknowledge the threats to their survival, and take action to protect and provide for them. You can check out more at the link in the Q&A box. Speaking of that Q&A box, that's where we'll be sharing both links and resources with you, as well as where you can enter your questions for our guests.
The hour will fly by, so as you have questions during the program, please go ahead and submit them right away in the Q&A box. That'll be at the bottom center of your Zoom interface. That way we have time to get through as many as possible once we get to the audience Q&A portion. The more questions we have queued up and ready to go, the better. Also on the toolbar is where you'll find the closed captioning options. This program does feature closed captioning, which you can turn on or off by hitting the CC button. This program is being recorded and will be posted on our webpage with a full transcript in a few weeks. All right. Let's get to it. We have a powerhouse group of guests for today's program, and truthfully, each one could probably give their own hour-long talk. We're attempting to do it all today.
Our goal is meant to expand your view of what a pollinator garden is and can be, how you can make your various green spaces more pollinator friendly, but also how the benefits and impacts of making space for pollinators can extend beyond the bounds of your garden plot. First, we'll start with pollination and pollinator basics with Gary Krupnick. Dr. Gary Krupnick is a research scientist at the National Museum of Natural History, where he heads up the Plant Conservation unit. Gary studies plant conservation biology, plant reproduction, the use of herbarium specimens to determine rarity and endangerment of plant species and plant pollinator interactions. Gary is also vice chair of the steering committee of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign or NAPPC as he may refer to it.
After Gary's talk, Thorne Rankin and Sally Shea from DC natives will walk us through how you go about planning your pollinator garden and what you need to get started. Thorne is a DC native with many years of experience in landscape design and project management. She brings a broad knowledge of the local natural environment, the importance of pollinators, and has witnessed the evolution of many local neighborhoods. Sally is a long-time DC resident with a commitment to improving equity and access to resources for all people. Trained as an urban planner and a social worker, she has a background in non-profit organizations and operations. Sally is also a vegetable and flower gardener.
Finally, Sara Via will share some of the benefits of native plants beyond pollination like climate benefits and water benefits. Dr. Sara Via spent 30 years as a research scientist at the University of Iowa, Cornell University and the University of Maryland. Now, she has turned to climate change education through the University of Maryland Extension in order to help Marylanders understand the problem and how they can help to solve it. Sara currently works with community groups, farmers, gardeners, and naturalists, and is a popular speaker on how climate change affects health, agriculture, gardens, native plants and home landscapes. After those three lightning talks, we'll open it up for your questions, which again, please enter them into Q&A box as you have them. Thank you so much for being here and without further ado, I turn it over to Gary Krupnick. Take it away, Gary.
Gary Krupnick:
There we go. Hi everybody. Thank you, Amanda, and thank you so much, everyone in the audience for joining us today. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen, so just bear with me for just a second. What I'm going to do is just jump right into pollination and what pollination is. Most of you here are joining us because you wanted to know about pollinated gardens, but what exactly is pollination? Most people assume that it's just an animal visiting a flower, but it's much, much more than that. Pollination actually occurs when pollen grains are moved between two flowers of the same species and that movement can either occur through wind or by an animal, and successful pollination results in the production of fertile seeds. The video I'm showing here is a hummingbird visiting a heliconia plant. The reason why I'm showing the video is that you could see that when the bird puts its beak inside a flower, such as it's doing right now, pollen grains are hitting the forehead of that bird. It's hitting a very specific spot on that bird.
When the hummingbird goes to another flower, it's then transferring that pollen to the stigma of the plant, the female part of the plant. That's the successful transfer of pollen grain from one flower to another flower and that is pollination. Ninety percent of all flowering plants rely on animal pollinators. About 75% of our food crops depend on animal pollinators. For every single bite of food, you have animals to think because they provide the food that you eat. That is what pollination is.
Who are these pollinators? Well, I just showed the hummingbird. There's a wide variety of animals that pollinate plants and birds are one of them. Most of you are most familiar with insects. When you think of pollinators, you probably think of honey bees and other kind of bees. Bees are tremendously important pollinators. Flies pollinate. You want to have chocolate without a fly image pollinating a chocolate flower. Butterflies and moths pollinate, as do beetles and even wasps. Beyond birds and insects, we also have bats and those are our nocturnal pollinators pollinating a lot of nighttime blooming flowers like cactus or agave.
Then there's an unusual suite of pollinators such as in this poster, a honey possum from Australia that pollinates. A lemur in Madagascar pollinates as well, as well as many other unusual pollinators that you would not expect. I already explained what that plant is getting out of pollination. It's getting the successful transfer of pollen resulting in seed, so these animals are aiding in the plant reproduction. But what are animals getting out of it? Well, they're getting rewards. Most of those rewards take the form of nectar or pollen. That is the food that they're eating. Other insects might collect oils or fragrances or resins, and some might actually lay their eggs in the flowers, they become breed sites for that insect. These animals are getting a lot of different kind of rewards.
The reason why we're so interested in pollinators and planting pollinator gardens is because pollinators currently are in peril. A 2016 United Nations report estimated that 40% of invertebrate pollinators and over 16% of vertebrate pollinators are threatened with extinction. Just think about that that almost half of all insect pollinators might not be here in the future if trends continue the way they go.
What are the threats? What is threatening these animals? Well, these threats include the typical threats that threaten most animals and plants. That's habitat loss. If you remove the habitat where a plant or an animal live, that animal or plant cannot survive. Habitat fragmentation leads to or is a big threat, as well as invasive species. A lot of plants and animals compete with species that aren't native to that region. Pesticides, diseases and parasites are all killing animal pollinators and global climate change has a tremendous impact on all of these systems, all the plants and animals. Then there's the synergistic effect between all of these individual threats compounding upon one another.
I'm going to briefly talk about two case studies and why we see them as being threatened with extinction. One is the common honeybee. This graph here is really busy. I apologize how busy it is, but I just want you to look at that red bar that's spanned across the bar. It shows the percent of honeybee colonies that are lost due to die off each year. The beekeepers across the US measure how much bee colony loss occurs each year. Last year alone, they lost over 45.5% of managed honeybee colonies. This is the second highest annual loss on record. The trend is not good. It's a six-point increase over the average loss of 39% over the past 10 years. Beekeepers usually identify an accessible level of loss. They usually expect to lose certain percentage of honeybee colonies, but the often quoted goal is usually 15% loss. Just think, 15% loss and last year alone we had over 45% loss.
The second case study I want to talk about are Monarch butterflies. These are amazing butterflies that migrate across our country each year. I'm showing you the graph of their migration route here, because I want to talk about what's happening in their overwintering sites. They overwinter in Mexico or in California, there's two different groups of monarchs. The ones that migrate from Mexico then migrate across up to Canada each year through spring and summer, and then after summer, they come back down to Mexico for overwintering. Likewise in California, they also migrate east and north then return back to their sites in California.
Each year we've been measuring how many butterflies and butterfly colonies occur in their overwintering sites. This is how much area is occupied by Monarch colonies in Mexico each winter. Last year, we had about 2.84 acres of area that was occupied by the Monarch colonies. You could see that over the past 20 years, it's been really dropping, especially compared to the first 10 years on this graph. There is major concern about Monarchs across the US. Here's the second graph, and this is the Western Monarch Thanksgiving count, where there's volunteers that go out every Thanksgiving to count Monarchs. You could see in 2021, there was a nice big jump. In 2020, less than 2000 Monarchs were counted. Last year, we had over 250,000 Monarchs counted, so that's good. But there were many environmental factors at play. There's no single cause or definite answer about this year's uptick, which is good, but hopefully it means that there was still time to protect these species.
I did mention that pollinators are very important for the food that we eat. Whole Foods did this campaign a few years ago, where they took a picture of the produce section showing the typical foods that most consumers shop for. Then they removed all the fruits and vegetables that you have to thank a bee for. If you remove those plants that are pollinated by bees, your food choices are far fewer. You don't get apples or blueberries or strawberries or melons or tomatoes or potatoes or almonds or cashews or vanilla or chocolate or coffee, the list goes on. All of these are with the help of pollinators.
What can you do to help pollinators? Well, you could watch for pollinators, get connected with nature, take a walk and look for pollinators. You could reduce your impact by reducing or eliminating pesticide use and increase that green space. Most importantly, you could plant for pollinators. You could plant or create a pollinator friendly habitat with native plants that supply pollinators with nectar and pollen. I'm going to pass it on to Thorne Rankin and Sally Shea, and they're going to talk more about how you can create a pollinator-friendly habitat. Take it away, Thorne.
Thorne Rankin:
Hi, everybody. I'm Thornee Rankin, I'm with DC Natives. We're a local non-profit working on building a pollinator pathway through the district. We collaborate with neighbors who want to beautify their corners of the city and help promote biodiversity through planning pollinator gardens one at a time. The hope is that we can collectively stitch together a pathway for pollinators to migrate through the city and make their homes here also. The important thing to remember with this work is that we can all do something. We can do something as small as a pot on your balcony, to a plot in your garden, a 5 x 10 plot in your garden, to a meadow space. Nothing is too small.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we approach this, which is planning your garden. Your garden can be a raised bed of metal or wood, could be planted in the ground. You just have to remove the grass or plants that are in the way. You can plant containers or pots. Again, if you live in an apartment and you have a balcony, you can put three to five milkweed plants in a pot. That's going to help give the Monarch butterfly a place to nest and to raise their young. Here, we have a balcony with lots and lots of pollinator flowers. Your site should have, if you want to do this in your own garden, your site should get six hours of sun a day, be close to a water source and not where kids or dogs or anything can get on top of the flowers.
We talk about the rule of three. When you're selecting your plants, you want to plant for three seasons. You want to do spring, summer and fall. You want to have three species ideally for each season, if you have the room. That means three different types of flowers for the spring and three for the summer and three for the fall. For this, because of this, all pollinators, some pollinators are generalists, then they can use all different kinds of pollinator flowers for habitat, but some are very specific. It's good to have a variety of species. Then, we also like to have planting groups with at least three flowers of each kind of flower, because it's less work for the pollinators to get their next meal. Three, three and three.
Plants that are most attractive to pollinators are open during the daytime. Although there are a few that are open at night for the moths. Shapes, Daisy shapes, shallow tubular, lots of small flowers, so that they can get from flower to flower easily to get to pass around and get the nectar as easily as possible. They're attracted particularly to white, yellow, blue, and purple. Here's some types of flowers for your garden. They have, on the left, the perennials, and a lot of people really like to plant perennials because obviously they don't have to replant them. These are plants that come back year after year. You put them in, they grow bigger, they come back every year, and these are the plants that by and large are actually providing habitat in terms of food for larva for the butterflies.
There's the Eupatorium, Baptisia and on down the list. We have an entire list of perennials on our website, DCNatives.org. It's planning your own pollinator garden that talks about all these flowers and specifically which ones, what time of year they bloom and how big they get, so when you're thinking about it from a design perspective, you want flowers, you want the taller things and the medium in the lower. Then, a lot of people like to throw some annuals in as well. You have Zinnias and sunflowers and cosmos. These are all great nectar sources for visiting pollinators. They have even herbs that can go to flower and pollinators can use those for a nectar source also.
If you're local, you can find these plants at some of these places here, Gingko Gardens, American Plant, Merrifield Garden Center. There are also some great mail order nurseries specifically for natives. We very much encourage you to plant native flowers in your pollinator garden, because that can both provide nectar, but also provide habitat because our local bugs and flowers, the flora and fauna co-evolved to use each other, so it's really important if you can to plant native as much as possible. Here's some really great sources for that. There are also a few local native nurseries too, which you can probably find by just Googling.
As I said, you could build raise bed. This metal bed is pretty inexpensive. You can get it, sit it on the ground, fill it with soil and plant your flowers. You do the wood bed, or if you decide to just do it in the ground, you just have to take out the vegetation and dig it up and then plant your flowers that way. Here's one of our first pollinator gardens that we planted. It's just got the cone flower, it's got some zinnias, which were the local color, it's got some evening Primrose, so there's that. Here are some organizations that are active in enhancing native habitats that are local. Some local, some national. These are all great sources and resources for more information. We'd love to let everyone know about our block captain program. If you live in DC, we are working in neighborhoods all over town, trying to build the pollinator pathway. Thank you. I want to hand it over to Sara, who is going to talk next.
Sara Via:
Okay. Hi, everyone. Thank you to Gary and Thorne for giving all that great information. I'm going to move a little bit beyond pollinators now, because native plants offer a whole array of really important additional benefits. Native plants tend to have very deep root systems. Here's a pretty famous drawing. Here's the ground level, here's the depth. It's meant to contrast the density and the depth of the roots of native plants with that of lawn, this is Kentucky bluegrass. This picture explains everything about lawn. It explains why you have to water it all the time, why you have to fertilize it, because the roots only go down a couple of inches and below that, the ground tends to be very compacted. That is part of what causes a lot of flooding and runoff, et cetera. If you plant some native plants in your yard, in beds or whatnot, you gain some additional benefits beyond the fact that they attract pollinators.
Many of the plants on here are grasses, and of course they're wind-pollinated, so they don't attract pollinators, but other plants on here, purple cone flowers on here somewhere and all grasses or flowering plants, but plants with showy flowers that attract pollinators are mixed in here. The deep dense roots have some important climate benefits, and that is that when the plants photosynthesize, of course, they are taking in carbon dioxide from the air and they're converting that through the miracle of photosynthesis to sugar, and plants give up to 40% of this precious sugar that they make from photosynthesis. They send it down through the roots and give it to microbes in the soil. There's a really cool, very intricate interaction between soil, bacteria and fungi and plant roots, and the plants get a lot of great benefits from these microbes. They pay them, if you will, by sharing some of the sugar that they make from photosynthesis.
The roots grow down really deep, the microbes help to improve the health of the soil. They set up a system of water pores, so that you get really good infiltration as I'll mention in a minute. But, first I want to say that when this sugar is coming down the roots and being exuded into the soil, some of that feeds the microbes, but some of it is stored in places where the microbes can't access it, and that's what's called carbon sequestration, storing atmospheric carbon, remember it came out of the sky. Atmospheric carbon in the soils is a very important natural climate solution. Deep roots also improve soil health. As I mentioned, the microbes and the roots together build a very intricate soil structure with water pores, and because there are many pores in the soil, when it rains really hard, the water doesn't just sit on top, it's able to soak in, and this reduces erosion and flooding. Okay, because if the water can't soak in, it runs off and carry soil with it.
These deep roots, after the rain, soak up a lot of water, because they're providing that water to their plant. Then, the water is infiltrated, then the roots soak it up, the plants use it, and then the water goes back out into the air. But this helps us to manage storm water. If you can plant a bed of deep-rooted native plants, that will help you manage storm water runoff in your yard. You don't have to have a fancy rain garden with outflow pipes and whatnot, a lot of engineering, you can just plant a nice bed of deep-rooted natives. The other thing that the deep roots do is they benefit the plant by being able to find a lot of water during dry periods. You don't have to water your native plant garden very much, because it has these roots to access the water on its own, not like lawn, which I think of as the infant of plants, you have to provide it with everything.
Okay. There's some climate and water benefits of native plants. I want to now, again, just expand our thinking beyond pollinators a little bit to think about how we can use our own yards as a force for good in restoring and rebuilding the biodiversity that is in such peril now. Gary talked about extinctions of pollinators, but as many as 60% of all insects are dwindling in numbers, so that they're not nearly as abundant as they were before, and this has big impacts on ecosystems. There's a list of eight things here, which come from a paper that was published last year in proceedings of the National Academy. Here, Amanda has put the link into the chat or the questions, I guess. It's open access, so you can get it for yourself off of the web.
I'll just go down these eight things because they're really simple. First, convert part of your lawn into diverse, natural habitat. Start around the edges and then expand the beds as much as you want. I like this progression, which came to me from a landscape architect, starting with a house, has a big bunch of grass around it for fairly typical in the suburbs. Why not add some native trees and shrubs around the edge, add some more shrubs and native plants, herbacious, non-woody plants in beds, add some around your house, put some in the front. Okay. This takes some time. Nobody's saying you need to do that all this summer, but you do it over time, and before you know it, you have a little bit of grassy space to play with your dog or your kids or whatever, but you don't have this grassy wasteland like as shown here.
If you can cooperate with your neighbors, you can build corridors and places of transit for many different wild species, and that provides habitat that's so crucially missing in many, many suburban locations, so that's that. Grow native plants, we've been talking about that. When I say beware cultivars, you all know that plant breeders take native plants, and then they maybe breed them to have a different flower color or a different leaf color. A good example is purple cone flower, which is native in the simple purple form. But plant breeders have bred cone flowers that have different colors, maybe they're yellow, maybe they're a different color of purple, they might be double. What we have found, we scientists have found, is that often insects, native insects, do not go to those cultivars as readily as they do the native plants, because they don't recognize them as a food plant.
They might be beautiful, but they may not contribute to your pollinator attraction potential as much as a regular native plant. It's not that hard to start native plants from verified seed. That means seed from a place that sells native seed, bonafide native seed, like Ernst seed or whatever. It's pretty easy to start these yourself. If you're a gardener, you start your broccoli transplant, you can start a bunch of native plants. Reduce your pesticide and herbicide use, we've talked about that already. Try mulch, or vinegar, instead of herbicide, it's much friendlier to all organisms. I want to dwell a little bit on limiting one's use of exterior lighting. It turns out, everybody knows this, you have a white light on your porch, your porch light is white, and you come out in the morning and there's, I had this experience, I have a little table by my porch light and there'd be just insect carnage all over the place. Little insect bodies, because they just beat themselves to death on these white lights.
It turns out amber lights are far less attractive, and so I replaced my white lights with amber lights and I don't have this big pile of insect bodies in the morning. Yellow lights are better than white, but not as good as amber. You can get these online. Also, very important to avoid mosquito foggers and bug zappers, because they are not just getting the mosquitoes, they are getting everything. They're basically like a killing field for all insects, which I think most of you really don't want in your yard. You'd like to get rid of the mosquitoes and Thorne and I both have some really good ideas for great mosquito traps, and if you want to email me, I'll tell you how to make it. My email svia@UMD, and I'll just point out my website, climatecorner.org. There are a lot of videos of my previous webinars on gardening and other things there you might want to take a look at.
Okay, the second group of the eight. Be careful about soap runoff from washing your car and reduce the use of driveway sealants, which are petrochemicals and deicing salts. All these wash down and then they are very hard on aquatic insects, et cetera. Now, here's some educational things, and I know that you all are interested in pollinators, maybe insects in general, and you can be an ambassador, an insect ambassador to your neighbors, because most people think all insects are bad except butterflies. But you can help people understand that insects serve really important purposes and most of them are not out to hurt you.
This is a panel of pictures of various insects from this paper. Again, it's the same PNAS paper, very accessible to non-scientists, so I urge you to take a look at it. You can tell your neighbors don't be freaked out about insects, you can become an educator and advocate for insect and plant conservation. Always important, you can get involved in your local politics. Very important, support science, okay. There are no alternative facts and vote. That's also extremely important in terms of promoting biodiversity, promoting the natural world. We have to have people who are speaking up for that. I'm going to stop now and I think it's time for questions if we have any.
Amanda Sciandra:
Thank you. All right. Let's get everyone back on here. Hi, Gary. Just waiting for Thorne and Sally. All right, the crew is back. Thank you all so much for condensing large topics into short, little lightning talks that we could get through a lot of information. We do already have some questions and praise in the Q&A. Keep them coming, audience. Thank you to those who have already submitted them. Let's start. Gary, we have one for you. It was entered while your talk was going on. I'm sure others could answer as well. The question is about honeybees, from Cheryl. Cheryl says, "Honeybees aren't native to the Americas, although honeybees are major pollinators, shouldn't we focus on native pollinators?" Can you comment on this, Gary?
Gary Krupnick:
That is a fantastic question, and I'm so glad someone asked it. I included honeybees in my talk because of two reasons. One, the food that we eat. They are so important for so many crops that are managed and they use these managed honeybees to pollinate those crops, and so they're critically important. Second reason why I include it is because of the data. We have so much data about honeybees, because so many people manage them. We don't have that same kind of data for a lot of native species, because we just don't have enough people in the field collecting that kind of data. I included the honeybees because what's happening to the honeybees is happening to a lot of native species as well. I wanted to show that data to emphasize the point that our pollinators are in trouble.
Native pollinator gardens, I want you to focus on the native pollinators that come to your garden and honeybees are not native, so provide those native plants. When I talk about natives, we're using that term a lot. It just means a plant that evolved in that region where you live. If you are in Maryland, I want you planting plants that are native to Maryland. If you're watching this video from Iowa, I want you planting plants that are native to Iowa. It's critically important that we plant these native plants to support the native pollinators, because that's what they are adapted to. They are looking for food that they are aware of.
I once saw a talk by Doug Tallamy, who's a famous entomologist at University of Delaware, and he was talking about the difference between planting a Bartlett tree versus an Oak tree in your yard. That Bartlett tree might have just, might support five or six animals, pollinators or birds or whatever. That Oak tree would support about 300 different species of the animals. It's really, really important that we use native species in our planting.
Amanda Sciandra:
Thank you. Just a reminder, at least for myself and maybe for others too, that the native range of plants varies. It could be a small range or it could be something like all of North America. It's very plant-dependent. Definitely good to do your research. Thanks, Gary. Okay. We have rapid fire questions coming in, so I'm going to try to bop some more around. Let's go with this question from Peter. Sara, as well as Thorne and Sally, you mentioned a phased approach. You don't have to do it all right away, you can start small and then expand year-to-year. The question here is about this interim zone. Peter asks, and maybe Sara, you can start and then Thorne and Sally, if you want to add anything. Is it better for our ecosystem for me to remove bits of my lawn and replace with wood chips until I get more native plants in there? What do you think?
Sara Via:
Yeah, that's a great question. It's sort of nuanced, because obviously, if there's no plants there, you're not going to be sequestering carbon or improving the soil. But you aren't going to be mowing and mowing is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions in the US. Shocking! Five percent of all US emissions come from gasoline and diesel powered yard equipment, and so you're not going to be using that stuff, so that's good. The good thing about putting wood chips down is that if you keep it deep, it will keep the weeds from growing, so you'll suppress the weeds and you'll have a really nice area, where perhaps there won't be so much weed invasion once you put your plants in there, so I think that's a great idea.
You have to have a lot of wood chips to keep the weeds down. If you just sprinkle a little bit, it'll be a weed paradise. But vinegar, try vinegar. Regular household vinegar's only 5%, but you can buy 15% or 20% vinegar, and that really does in little tiny weeds because they don't have any roots. If you kill off the leaves and the top area, they've got nothing to put up anything else, and so that's it. If you wait till weeds are big, forget it. The vinegar's not going to help you out. Anybody else want to comment on that?
Thorne Rankin:
The other comment I would have on the weed suppression is we've been using newspaper. You use newspaper, you use cardboard, they even sell a horticultural sheeting of thin cardboard for weed suppression and what we've found is that in our first year of a pollinator garden, if we put down a really thick layer of newspapers, cover that with mulch, because what the key is, the thing that most homeowners struggle with and probably they do in larger municipal plannings is invasive plants. Any plant that gets in there, if you can keep the invasive plants from getting a root and starting to grow and give your pollinator plants a chance to really become robust, they just have it much, so even a year of good weed suppression.
If he wants to put down newspaper, wood chips, and even just buy plants that can go three feet apart for pollinator plants, that's not a huge expenditure, get that started because lots of our pollinator plants will get to be two or three feet wide and then you can divide them and move them around. I would say, don't wait. Start killing that lawn now.
Amanda Sciandra:
I know Sara has resources on that paper that you use to control-
Sara Via:
Yes, I was just going to mention that. I did a bunch of experiments last year on using this horticultural paper, which I think is a little different from the cardboard that you mentioned, Thorne. It comes in three or four-foot widths and maybe 50-feet or a hundred feet length. I use it both in my vegetable garden. I just roll it out, down the row and then cut little places to put in the transplants, no weeds. I planted a bunch of pollinator test gardens with this. We planted the plants six inches, eight inches or 12 inches apart, and this paper keeps the weeds down. If you plant in June or something, it keeps the weeds down the whole season until the canopy closes. I found it reduced weeding by, oh, 75%. This stuff is great. I am not as patient as Thorne because when I go out to my garden with little pieces of newspaper, the wind starts to blow, it starts to blow away, I'm chasing this newspaper, I get really crabby. These rolls of paper that stayed put mostly are really helpful for impatient people like myself.
Amanda Sciandra:
Thank you. Yeah, and I know we've shared a lot of really valuable resources, and so we'll make sure to follow up with everyone via email so that you, if you didn't capture it in the Q&A today, that you'll still have those resources available to you. Okay. Let's bop over to a question from Natalie. Let's go with, Gary, maybe you have a comment on it first and then Thorne and Sally follow up perhaps. The question is, my balcony is all the way up on the 10th floor. How can I ensure my pollinator garden is useful all the way up there? Gary, maybe you can comment based on your knowledge of how high these insects are flying.
Gary Krupnick:
Right, right. If you build it, they will come. Plant, put potted gardens on your balcony and a lot of insects will find it. Certain insects might be low-flying, but a lot of insects will make it up there and shouldn't have any problem at all. I'm glad to hear that you brought that up, because just because you don't have a backyard doesn't mean that you can't participate. We're looking for people to participate no matter where, what kind of environment you're in. If you're in an apartment, put one under your balcony. If you have a backyard, use your backyard. If you don't even have space to do it, try to encourage your local school to plan a pollinator garden, or try to talk to someone at a church or a synagogue or a mosque to plant a pollinator garden on their properties as well. Every place can use a pollinator garden.
Amanda Sciandra:
Anything-?
Thorne Rankin:
The only thing I would add to that is that when you move outside your own space, your own apartment, your own garden plot, wherever you go, because we've worked on some larger projects with municipal areas, parks and community gardens, there has to be somebody who's committed to caring for it, absolutely 100%. Get it established, keep it weeded, keep it watered, keep it alive. There's got to be a champion. When we are working in any situation like that, we always find the champion first. It's just important to remember that part of it, because it's surprising how often people want those gardens and don't really want to do everything else to keep it going. That was the only thing I would add.
Sally Shea:
We've had gardens die because people who want it to be beautiful and whatever, it's the natives, once they're established are very low maintenance and can generally take care of themselves, depending on where you live, of course. Every ecosystem is different, but at least in Washington, at least for the first couple of years, there needs to be somebody who's going to weed it and water it and take care of it. Not if you have the magic paper that Sara's talking about, but in general, you have to take care of it. It's like having, it's alive and you have to take care of it and nurture it. It gets its legs at least at the beginning.
Amanda Sciandra:
Thank you. Okay. There's a couple questions here about shade plants. The first question and maybe Thorne, you can comment and perhaps Sara, the question is from Robert. What perennials are good for partial shade in central Maryland? Then there's another question from Charlotte. Are there pollinator plants that can be planted in mostly shade?
Thorne Rankin:
There is a list of plants that we have used in partial shade. Hoogra, tiarella, hardy geranium. Which one?
Sally Shea:
Chelone.
Thorne Rankin:
Chelone, yes, [Penstemon 00:42:23]. But I think an important thing to reiterate is it's the plant. Whether it's attractive to pollinators and beneficial to pollinators is one facet of what we're working on. The other piece is a native plant that's a fern, that's a gallium, [Sweetwood 00:42:48], well that has flowers, but anyway. Some things that are strictly foliage plants are very beneficial to all kinds of wildlife, and that would be something that both Sara and Gary could speak to. I don't think you need to only focus on the flowers and how they can be beneficial to pollinators, even though that's ... it's really good to remember that a lot of the foliage plants also have benefits to both pollinators as well as, even if they're not getting nectar from the nectar source, they can get ... some butterflies will use them as larval host. It's good. There are probably decent guides to what you can use in a shady pollinator garden, but those are a few things that I can think of if anyone else has something to offer.
Gary Krupnick:
Yeah, if I can add to that. Either Amanda or Naimah, if you could put a link to the planting guides. The North America Pollinator Protection Campaign, a few years ago, came out with planting guides for pollinators throughout the United States and Canada. I know there was a lot of groups that have their own planting guides. These were very well-vetted and they give very well, good descriptions of what trees, what bushes and shrubs, what plants, herbs that you could plant in full sun, full shade, partial sun, partial shade. If you want to plant just for butterflies or plant for hummingbirds, it gives a pretty good list. What's great about that link is that you could type in your zip code and will pull up the planting guide for your area, and so it's very, very useful if you're not from the D.C. area.
Amanda Sciandra:
Love that. Thank you, yeah. We did. It's in the Q&A, but if you left and came back or if you joined after we posted it, you may not see it at the moment. Again, we'll follow up with all these links in an email after the program. Okay. We have so much, so I'm going to keep going. I also love this question, it's from Andrew. The question is, I heard mostly about flowers. Are there vegetable plants that pollinators enjoy, so I could kill two birds? I'm going to sub that with, could I feed two birds with one seed in the garden? Let's go with Thorne, then Gary or Sara, if you want to add to that, please chime in.
Thorne Rankin:
I mentioned earlier, lots of our annual herbs flower. Cilantro, dill, and then some of the medicinal herbs, borage, all these different kinds of herbs that are annual herbs flower, and those are great nectar sources for pollinators. Having vegetables, I guess the reason that we even have, a lot of the reason why people are concerned about pollinators at this point is the food supply. I think it probably helps the pollinators to have as many tomato plants, egg plants, pepper plants. No, Sara, you're shaking your head. I'm not the scientist here. Remember I am the landscape designer and the pollinator garden designer, so Sara probably has more to say on this, but I would just say lots of the annual herbs do flower and pollinators certainly seem to cluster around them. Now I'm going to Sara.
Sara Via:
I'm not sure of a very wide array of native pollinators will be pollinating your tomatoes. In contrast, gardeners talk about planting native plants in your garden to attract more insects to the garden, because some of them will pollinate some of your plants. That's the direction I like to go, is I like to plant native plants with showy flowers in my garden and then I just have pollinators all over the place. Some of them are going to pollinate my tomatoes, but most of them aren't. I just like to have a lot of different kinds of things around. Vegetables will not attract too many different kinds of things.
Gary Krupnick:
I will just say certain vegetables are native to the Americas. If you're planting squash plants, it's going to be attracting squash bees, and so that's very good for that species.
Sara Via:
Yeah.
Gary Krupnick:
But you're right, a lot of them, it's good to target other plants, but the biggest benefit, as Sara said, is that the more native plants you have, the better your vegetable garden is going to do, because the native pollinators will find those vegetable plants as well.
Amanda Sciandra:
Okay. Two questions related in the sense that we're thinking about plants beyond just your standard pollinator plants and native leafy plants. There's a question here from Maria. Could you talk about weeds as pollinator plants? How much weeding is actually necessary? I love this question because sometimes I don't like to pull my weeds. I think some of them are labeled weedy, but that's a subjective category that perhaps we can reconsider. Then, there's also a question here from Stella about native trees, trees that support pollinators. Stella thinks they can be more important than gardens during certain times of the year. Can we comment on this? We're talking weeds and trees. Sara, do you want to start? Do you have thoughts on this?
Sara Via:
Yeah, I'm sorry. I was looking at a comment in the Q&A, which said that the attendees were not able to see the answers to the questions or even all the questions, which I'm sorry, I got a little bit waylaid on that. I'm going to claim a senior moment and just ask you if you could just repeat what you said, your question to me.
Amanda Sciandra:
Sure. The question is about native trees supporting pollinators as well as some weeds, maybe they shouldn't be pulled. Can they-?
Sara Via:
Yeah, yeah. Some native trees are really, really important for pollinators like Oaks. I have a lot of tulip poplars in my yard and they are, apparently, the larval food plant for one of the swallow tails. I can look up into this, these things are like 120 feet tall. I can look up into this canopy and see these little yellow butterflies floating around, so they are definitely providing a service. Weeds, there's a whole spectrum of weeds. There are native plants which are weedy. Then there are invasive weeds and they are really not serving any good purpose at all, except to just get us get in trouble and compete with other plants for water and nutrients, and so you want to keep that stuff out of your yard because some of the invasives are so aggressive that they'll just spread over everything and then your plants that you planted so lovingly in your pollinator bed will be overtaken by some of these invasive weeds.
People ask me all the time. Well, don't weeds provide carbon to the soil microbes over the winter? Well, yeah, but then when you come out in the spring, your whole garden is filled with these weeds, so it's better to plant a cover crop or something in the garden instead of that.
Amanda Sciandra:
All right. Anyone have any additions, comments? Trees or weeds? Okay, let's keep going then. Question from Dave and Jen. What's the difference between planting a native plant for hummingbirds and setting up a feeder for hummingbird. Gary, do you want to take that one?
Gary Krupnick:
There we go. Excellent question. I never thought about that. To help the hummingbird, again, I would suggest planting native plants because you're helping the environment by having a plant. That plant is going to serve not just the hummingbird, but serve other animals as well. Whereas, the hummingbird feeder is just going to be helping that hummingbird. You have to replenish that hummingbird feeder on your own, whereas the plant does it by itself. That plant will be producing nectar over and over and over again, so it's a lot less work for you. I would suggest going the plant route rather than the feeder route.
Sara Via:
Also, if I could just add one thing, regular nectar from plants almost certainly has other components in it besides the sucrose that you would put in a hummingbird feeder, trees minerals and whatnot. I don't know for a fact what's in there, but I just suspect it's more than just plain sucrose.
Amanda Sciandra:
Okay. We're going to try something here. There's a couple of questions that are, should I keep this or should I get rid of this? I'm going to say a thing and you do a thumbs up if they should keep it and a thumbs down, if they should get rid of it. Are you ready? Okay. First one, raspberries and black raspberries, keep or get rid of?
Sara Via:
I think that depends on your purpose. Black raspberries are all over the place, but you can eat those if you want to, or you can pull them out if they're in the way.
Amanda Sciandra:
What about for pollinators? Do pollinators like the raspberries?
Sara Via:
Yeah. I have cultivated raspberries and there's pollinators all over them, but again, does it fit in your yard? Do you want the berries? Do you want to spend the time cultivating the plants? I have those black raspberries everywhere and I pull them out.
Amanda Sciandra:
All right. Next, Virginia creeper, keep or get rid of? Ooh, keep. What else? We like Virginia creeper. Oh, in the middle, depends.
Sara Via:
I'm even on that because sometimes it just takes over. It's a native plant, sometimes it's okay to have it there if it's not interfering with other things. I have a lot of it in my property and it would take over if I let it.
Gary Krupnick:
Yeah. For me, I remove it from my yard because it's overtaking a lot of my other plants.
Sara Via:
Poison Ivy is a native plant, but I don't leave it in my yard.
Amanda Sciandra:
Point taken. Okay. Next one is Clover. Do we like it as an alternative to lawn? Thumbs up. Okay, good. I think that's most of it.
Thorne Rankin:
There is a micro Clover also. That's not the regular Clover that grows everywhere and it's shorter and it's a very, people are using it as a lawn substitute. If you seat it in with [inaudible 00:53:35], it apparently, it just doesn't grow as tall. Clover's not a native, so we always have to balance that. However, if it enables people to get rid of their lawns and stop using gasoline, then it's good and you do see bees all over it, so it's a mixed bag.
Gary Krupnick:
I got Clover, I got dandelions in my lawn just because I don't put all those chemicals on my lawn and I just let them be and I see plenty of pollinators on them, so let those be even though they're not native.
Sara Via:
My motto is if it's green, I mow it. I don't worry about it, if there's a dandelion in there or whatnot. I love Clover in lawns, and in fact, historically, people used to always plant Clover in lawns because it fixes nitrogen and does allows you to not use so much synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. I think Clover lawn should be a badge of climate friendliness. They're low, you can plan them. Nothing's perfect, right? It is introduced, but it's fixing nitrogen, it's helping the soil, you're not mowing it.
Gary Krupnick:
When I walk my dog through the neighborhood and I see a completely spotless lawn that's just grass, I just think of a wasteland as someone said use that word. It's like, where's the Clover? Where's the dandelion? Where's the other stuff? Nothing is being supported by that perfectly green lush lawn.
Sara Via:
You probably don't want your dog to walk on it because it's a toxic wasteland. They spray it all the time with ... you can't get a perfect lawn unless you do all that high maintenance, very climate unfriendly stuff.
Gary Krupnick:
Agreed.
Amanda Sciandra:
Okay. We have one more up vote or down vote and then I have, I think a final question for you because we're almost running up on time and I want to make sure you have time to add any last comments if we have a chance to. Creeping Charlie, thumbs up or thumbs down? We have no opinion on Creeping Charlie?
Sara Via:
I forget what that is actually.
Amanda Sciandra:
I think I have it in my yard. It's like very shallow roots and covers a lot of ground, but doesn't get very tall. Don't mow it, but doesn't really do much.
Sara Via:
Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about.
Amanda Sciandra:
Okay. Then, the last question here is about, I know Sara and I think Thorne mentioned as well being in collaboration or cooperating with your neighbors to create pathways for pollinators, extend beyond your plot. But what if your neighbors don't agree with the aesthetics of your pollinator-friendly yard or your low mow space? What do you recommend as a way to get everyone on board and be cooperative in the benefit of pollinators? Who wants to start? Sara, I see you nodding a lot. Do you want to go first? Then, we'll bop over to Gary, Thorne and Sally.
Sara Via:
This is a problem, because many suburban folks just love lawn and don't understand really anything about living things and nature and they're afraid of it. In order to be able to have a native garden in your yard, it's useful to introduce what people call cues to care. That is little things in there that say, "This is not a vacant lot, I have not abandoned my home, here's this pollinator garden over here, but I have a little mowed area. I put a bird bath in there or I've got a little sign in there. I live here, I'm taking care of this," and that really helps people.
If you live in a homeowner's association, maybe speak at a meeting and give people some idea of the benefits of planting these plants and how important it is for rehabilitating ecosystems to provide this habitat. But it can be a long row to hoe. If you live in Maryland, I'm happy to report that the Maryland legislature last year passed a bill making it illegal for homeowner associations to force you to plant grass in your front yard. There have been a lot of ugly interactions with neighbors and sometimes it can just bring out the worst in people and it requires a very diplomatic touch.
Amanda Sciandra:
We are running up on time. Anyone want to add? Thorne and Sally?
Sally Shea:
I just have a personal anecdotal story, which is that, with Thorne's help, my front yard is now lawn-free and my neighbors still don't really understand it. Then, out of defense, I put a D.C. native sign in my yard, which is not really true, because it's not all native yet. It has created such a conversation as I'm out there waiting that people now ask me about it and it's actually been a conversation starter and I think now people are like, "What do you think about this? Or, did you know I have a native?" All this, it is actually a catalyst, so a cue to care like Sara said, and even just a sign this is a pollinator-friendly garden might help.
Thorne Rankin:
I agree a hundred percent, and I also would just make one pitch, which is trying to keep it positive with the neighbors.
Sara Via:
Yeah.
Thorne Rankin:
I find that if we talk about biodiversity and like Sally says, be intentional and Sara puts the sign, people know what you're trying to do. You try and talk to your neighbors rather than say, "You know, I noticed you have a sign that you had your yard sprayed by mosquitoes rather," if you planted blah, blah, blah over, and I try and be helpful, try and be collaborative and keep it positive. Don't make it seem like you're taking something away from people, but more like adding something, maybe if there's a way to have that conversation.
Sara Via:
Yeah. Yeah. May I mention one thing? I saw a question that says beware Clover and bee stings. A lot of people have commented to me that they don't want Clover in their yard because they're afraid of bee stings. I did not realize that was the thing. I'm not allergic to bee stings. If you want your kids running around your yard barefoot, then maybe you don't want to have Clover in it. In most cases, I don't see that many honey bees on Clover in yards, but if you've had a bad experience I can understand. Don't expect trouble, because if you're not out there in bare feet, you're not going to get bee stings in your yard.
Amanda Sciandra:
Cool. Thank you. Okay. We are actually running up one time. I know we could talk about this forever, and as a reminder, we'll make sure to share all the resources and links with everyone. That is all the time we have. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone for joining, for asking such wonderful questions. Thank you to Gary, Thorne, Sally and Sara. Special thanks to the donors, volunteers and partners who make this program possible, help the Smithsonian reach, educate, and empower people all over the world.
If you want to keep up with other natural history programs and events, sign up for our weekly eNewsletter. Check it out on the Q&A and our upcoming events are on our webpage. Links are both there. If you're local to DC and are celebrating pollinator week with the children in your life, you'll definitely want to check out our other pollinator week event on Thursday, June 23rd, with Latin Grammy award-winning musician, author, activist, and educator, Mister G. Going to be a great time, Thursday morning. Link is in the Q&A. You'll also see a link to a survey. It'll also pop up when you exit the webinar. Anyway, please, hope you'll take a moment to respond, we truly do read every response and we appreciate your feedback greatly. Thank you all again and happy Pollinator Week.
