Spring has sprung! With the change in season, we are seeing trees returning to their green splendor and flowers that add pops of color to our landscape. Did you know that pollinators such as butterflies, moths, flies, birds, bats, and bees use the nectar in these blooms as their first foods, which in turn helps the plant cycles continue? To encourage people to protect pollinators and to honor their important work, National Pollinator Week was established in 2007 by the US Senate with the Pollinator Partnership under Laurie Davies Adams. It has since grown into a month-long international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services that pollinators provide to the plants and in turn, to us. It encourages people to protect the pollinators by providing them with the right environment.
Even though there are over 100,000 invertebrates and more than a thousand mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians that take part in pollinating plants. Bees are the most effective pollinators. They pollinate our crops and wild plants, which provide us with 1/3 of the food we eat. Some reports state that pollinators are declining worldwide due to loss of habitat and disease. Our goal is to support the bee population, and other pollinators, which will also protect our crop yield and the ecosystem.
There are many things that we can do to support our pollinator friends. We can plant a pollinator-friendly gardens with nectar-rich flowers and native plants. We can try to choose plants that flower at different times to help provide food to last throughout the seasons. Another option would be to build or buy a bee hotel for the solitary bees that live alone and not in a hive. They do not produce honey and rarely ever sting. The female bees will lay eggs in the tubes and patch the door with mud. We can encourage hummingbirds to visit by hanging feeders in our yard. They will probably also swing by and pollinate yard plants while they are in the neighborhood. A fun factoid is that plants which are pollinated by hummingbirds produce more nectar than plants pollinated by insects. More and more cities have joined in to participate in the No Mow May. By allowing lawns to grow, dandelions and all, it creates a habitat and forage for early season pollinators. It also increases the diversity of wildlife including bees and other insects.
At Sprucewoods, we have a client that is very interested in nature and wildlife. With the help of staff, they have put up a bee hotel in the garden and they make sure that the bird and hummingbird feeders are full. We planted beautiful flowers around the building and held off until the last week of May to mow the lawn. The garden was planted a little too soon and even though the plants were under a plastic dome, most of them didn’t make it. We will try planting again in the coming week or two, so we can enjoy the fresh produce later this season while also creating an environment that will protect and encourage pollinators to thrive.