The Pleasure and Importance of Planting for Pollinators

By Maraleen Manos-Jones

Whenever a butterfly, bee, or bird visits my gardens, it makes me pause and look more closely. Their beauty enchants me and lifts my spirits. It is hard to imagine that we are on the precipice of losing so many, endangered by habitat loss, the abundant use of toxins, and climate change, among other factors. We have all become more aware of the perils facing our pollinators since their demise would profoundly affect the production of our food, with the loss of about a third of fruits and vegetables besides innumerable flowers. We cannot replace habitats, but by creating beautiful non-toxic mostly native gardens, we can nourish, aid, and abet our pollinators while helping ourselves.

Over a million individuals have created pollinator gardens that are registered with the Pollinator Partnership. Many communities have created public gardens along our Scenic Byways. There are now pollinator gardens in front of libraries and town halls, acting as models and inspiration in their municipalities. Because we all know that without insects, there would be no birds; without bees, no honey or many foods; without bats, many more mosquitoes; and without butterflies, a loss of inspiration, hope and pollination. We all have a part to play and can enjoy the process.

Most of us do not have an estate like Sir Winston Churchill’s in Sussex, England where he raised 1500 butterflies a season starting in 1946. No matter what size garden you have, be it a window box, a front or backyard, or 40 acres, putting your hands in good, rich, organic soil acts as an anti-depressant. A substance in the soil, Mycobacterium vaccae, stimulates serotonin production leading to a happier and more relaxed state of being. It influences neurons in a similar way as an anti-depressant, only with no negative side effects.

Every window box adds a nourishing place to nectar and rest on pollinators’ meanderings. Many years ago, I was thrilled when a monarch successfully emerged on milkweed in a planter outside my city window. City butterflies need our help too.

Even if you are new to gardening, you will find that native plants are easier to tend and need less watering in addition to attracting local butterflies, birds and bees. For those afraid of bees and wasps, I find a laissez-faire attitude works well; I pay no attention to them, nor do they pay attention to me.

Choosing the right plant for the right place does wonders for its health and hardiness. Is there full sun, partial shade or deep shade? Is the area dry or wet? What kind of soil, clay or sandy?

Here in the Catskills, there are always rocks of all sizes with which to contend. Plan your garden for bursts of color, at least three of every flower. It is important and a joy to always have something blooming from early spring through late autumn.

What are weeds but gifts that we humans haven’t planted? Those little bursts of bright yellow dotting our lawns that we’ve been taught to hate, the ubiquitous dandelion, is one of the earliest flowers to provide for the early spring bees and butterflies, besides being beneficial to us humans. The early leaves before flowering are nutritional and tasty in salads, the flowers can be made into wine, and tea made from the dried roots supports our immune systems, just as the nectar gives a boost to the immune systems of bees and butterflies. They look cheerful in lawns, not in my garden beds. Fortunately there is a tool that looks like a mini-crowbar that easily digs up the roots, which I then dry for tea.

Lawns cover about forty million acres in the U.S. and use more herbicide per acre than the Big Agricultural sector. Clover was very much a part of lawns up until the early fifties when it also became the target of the herbicide/fertilizer industry. Clover absorbs nitrogen from the air and directs it into the earth as a natural fertilizer where it is easily utilized by grass and other plants. In addition to bees and butterflies adoring its delicious nectar, it is a host plant for Sulphur and White butterflies. Violets look beautiful in a lawn besides being the host plant for Fritillary butterflies. By transforming lawns into more natural landscapes, we can collectively help save our pollinators, improve water quality, and improve our own health.

There are simple steps that increase the health of your lawn while decreasing the need for chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and watering. One such step is to leave grass cuttings on the lawn, which decreases the need for any nitrogen fertilizer by fifty percent. There are many approaches to creating colorful pollinator friendly mini meadows in your lawns. Mow paths through the property. Create small circles scattered amidst the grass where you loosen the soil, add organic compost, seeds or seedlings and mulch. Water well. Encourage them with your words and deeds.

There are over seventeen thousand species of butterflies worldwide, about seventy species in the Northeast. Each species of butterfly has taken millennia to develop a particular relationship with a specific plant. Each species lays her eggs only on the host plant that will support her caterpillars.

Monarchs lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed, which is being eradicated by extensive use of Round-up, whose main ingredient is glyphosate. Traditionally, milkweed grew alongside cornfields, but now no more. Iowa alone has lost about 98% of its milkweed due to the application of this herbicide. This has had devastatingly negative effects on the monarch population, one of the most iconic, beloved, and well-known butterfly species in the United States.

Milkweed not only supports monarchs, but many species of pollinators are attracted to its sweet smelling flowers; when they are blooming in early summer, they infuse the air with a vanilla, cinnamon, honey aroma. The seeds spread in the fall, airborne on their silken threads, blowing in the wind. The seeds need to striate, that is overwinter by freezing, thawing, soaking, before sprouting in late spring. You can hasten that process by soaking seeds for 48 hours, putting them in the freezer for another 48, repeating the process at least three cycles, then planting, scratching the earth before covering the seeds with a thin layer of soil at the edges of your property. You can now find various species of milkweed at many nurseries.

Where we buy our plants has a profound impact on pollinators. Almost half of all garden plants are bought in big box stores where most plants are grown from seeds treated with a pesticide called neonicitinoids, neonics, for short, which expresses in every cell of the plant: the stem, leaves, flowers, nectar and pollen. It is persistent, lasting for months or even years in the soil and waterways. A team of international scientists synthesized information from over a thousand published peer-reviewed studies concluding that neonics pose a serious threat to pollinators. When bees ingest a large dose of a neonic pesticide, they die immediately. They also concluded unequivocally that neonics accumulate in a bee’s system affecting smell, memory, reproduction, feeding behavior, flight, and the ability to fight disease over time, contributing to their decline.

Ask the nursery if their plants are pesticide free. Many more nurseries have designated sections for pollinator plants. You don’t want to lure the pollinators to their death. The bottom line is what the multi-billion dollar pesticide industry understands. Money talks: if most, perhaps all of us, stopped buying the poisons that are being peddled, possibly we could alter the trajectory ahead.

A sprinkling of annuals among your native perennial and vegetable gardens augments them with a variety of nectar sources and an array of colors, cleomes, cosmos, sunflowers, and zinnias among them. Planting flowers amidst your vegetables makes them more robust. Some flowers, like marigolds, offer protection to tomato plants, others are delicious in salads, such as nasturtium or borage.

Bushes and trees are host plants to many local butterfly species besides offering shelter from the storms: Azaleas, Blueberries, Dogwoods, Spicebush, Turtlehead, along with Birch, Cherry, Hackberry, Oak, Plum, Walnut and Willow trees among them.

Buddleia Davidii, Butterfly Bush, a non-native, flowers early summer until the first frost, and is a great source of nectar for all the pollinators, but needs continual deadheading, cutting off of the spent flowers, to keep it constantly blooming.

While enjoying your morning coffee notice how your plants are doing. It is easier to deal with problems, such as aphids, in the early stages. There are many books and online sources for planting and tending to your pollinator gardens, some listed at the end of this article.

I hope you stop by the Pollinator Garden in front of Kenco Outfitters on Route 28 for inspiration. Although I initiated the creation of this garden, many helpers offered time, energy, and funds. All the local nurseries donated plants, as did many local folks. It became a community effort to welcome humans and all living creatures to the Catskills.

The effect of a butterfly’s wing can be felt around the world and beating wings beating no more has enormous implications. When we create healthy gardens, we nourish our pollinators and ourselves while helping to create green corridors for their safe passage. We can save our planet one garden at a time.

About the author: Butterflies have inspired Maraleen Manos-Jones for fifty years. She is the recipient of the 2022 Pollinator Advocate Award from the Pollinator Partnership. She is an author, artist, educator, master gardener, and environmental activist. Visit her website at spiritofbutterflies.com

Resources to Learn More

Websites

pollinator.org/guides xerces.org/pollinator-conservation nps.gov/subjects/pollinators/northeast-card.htm catskillnativenursery.com/plant-lists-for-wildlife.html

Books

Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy

Mini Meadows by Mike Lizotte

Butterfly Gardening by Xerces Society/Smithsonian Institution

Butterfly Gardens by Brooklyn Botanical Gardens