Dive into the Buzz - Creating a Pollinator Garden

gardeningflower garden
Written By Catharina Soesetyo

The article documents the content of the seminar held at the Azusa Library and the Alhambra Library - Dive into the Buzz, Creating a Pollinator Garden, Presented by Catharina Soesetyo, Kitchen Garden Consultant with Blissful Growing.

I feel like preaching to the choir regarding the importance of pollinators. It is not news that bees are “disappearing” and the numbers of Monarch butterflies are dwindling. So, I am not going to reiterate how important pollinators are to our survival in this world.

Now, let’s dive into the buzz!  

So you want to create a pollinator garden - whether because a flower garden adds curb appeal or you have a kitchen garden that needs pollinating or simply you care about the sustainability of this planet - the best way to start is from the beginning.

I am going to repeat what I always say in planning for a kitchen garden.

LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION

Location is paramount. It is the stage for the beautiful display of appealing and mouthwatering nectars (to the pollinators) and you want to highlight the stage as much as possible in plain sight and under the full sun. 

It is just logic. First, most insects come buzzing about when the weather is warm and hot, because they are cold blooded (exothermic). They hide and inactive when the weather is cold. Second, insects, say bees and butterflies, see color differently than us. Our human eyes are limited to see only the short wavelength lights, whereas butterflies and bees can see UV lights. When sunlight hits the flowers, bees and butterflies see more than what we see. The array of color is what attracts them to the flowers. 

An ideal location should also accommodate irrigation. The pollinator garden will be filled with a combination of perennial, annuals, and although mainly natives, some might be not. And while nature doesn’t mind having a bald landscape in the Winter, honestly we’d much prefer not having a barren landscape. Keep the irrigation on a drip system that can be programmed to properly water the garden. 

This sounds familiar if you have heard me talking about how to start a kitchen garden - sunlight and water? Naturally, you can plant flowers among the vegetables, practically bringing the bees straight to where you want them to pollinate.

In this article, we won’t be talking about not just several flower plants in between the tomatoes or zucchinis, we are talking about a designated location planted with different types of vegetation as a go-to hang out place for pollinators.

A BUFFET GARDEN 

Say we have the location pegged, next question is:

WHAT MAKES AN IDEAL POLLINATOR GARDEN?

Picture this: I am planning a big party where I invite every single family in my neighborhood to come. Where would be the best place to have the party that serve a variety of food that would satisfy everyone? 

Insert lightbulb emoji here, the answer is a buffet restaurant! A really good one like the one at the Bellagio hotel. They serve a wide selection of food that would meet everyone’s palate. 

Pollinators have different physiology that determine the type of plants they can eat from. Just like a buffet restaurant, a good pollinator garden should cater to almost all types of pollinators out there from bees to birds to … bats, if applicable to your area.

STRATEGY TO CURATING A POLLINATOR GARDEN

The ideal pollinator garden should provide:

  1. FOOD source

  2. HOST plants to lay egg and feed their youngs

  3. Space for SHELTER 

  4. Drinking WATER 

  5. Sustainable Practice to maintain the garden

Since we are already on track with the restaurant analogy, let’s continue. 

PERENNIALS - APPETIZERS: Small serving of food, easy to eat

An absolute must grow in a pollinator garden is perennial. Perennial is native to your area, hence they grow well, low maintenance, and most importantly, local pollinators LOVE them! 

Just like humans, the locals and their local food. For example, where I grew up, I love eating the street vendors’ fried rice. Everyone can eat it if they don't love it. It's pretty much a common people’s food.  In a garden scenario, perennial is the universal food for the local pollinators, a guaranteed buzzing plants. So, grow perennials! 




Butterfly

HOST PLANTS - MAIN COURSE - The primary meal 

If you want to attract certain pollinators, provide the host plants for their larvae to grow.

This usually is where I go off on a tangent and talk on and on about MONARCH and forgot about what we were discussing before… But you can read about monarch butterflies in my blog on Monarch Sanctuary Garden.

Monarch butterflies usually steal the spotlight on discussions regarding pollinator host plants, however there are other equally striking (if not equally important) butterflies that have specific host plants. These are some butterflies that frequent our garden and their host plants:

  • Monarch - milkweed 

  • Mourning Cloak - Chinese Elm, Willow

  • Gulf Fritillary - Passion Vine (passion flower or passion fruit)

  • Painted Ladies - Lupine, Thistle, Dwarf Nettle

  • Giant Swallowtails - Citrus trees, Rue 

Here’s a fun trivia. The larvae of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly is also called the “bird poop caterpillar.” I'll let you figure out why.

There are more than one type of Swallowtail butterflies. You can read more about the swallowtails and their host plants in the source linked at the end of this article.

If you plant it they will come

ANNUALS - DESSERT - Eye catching and inviting

Annuals are the showstopper of the season with their vibrant colors and explosion of blooms. For example, the California Poppies. If you’ve never personally witnessed the “Super Bloom”, you must have at least seen a picture of it on social media. After they put on a spectacular show, annuals usually die. If they got to produce seeds, chances are they will self seeds and new plants will grow when Spring comes around. 

Annual flower is great choice to incorporate in kitchen garden beds. The vibrant color attract pollinators straight to where they are needed, as well as adding a splash of color to the otherwise mainly green vegetable bed. At the end of planting season they usually get cleaned out with the rest of the out of season veggies. It works out well. 

EXAMPLE OF ANNUALS Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella), California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica), and Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

SHELTER - AMBIANCE - Comfortable  

Don't you want to go back to a restaurant that not only have good food but is also great to hang out?  

Providing shelter for pollinators prompts them to stay around in your garden. Close to to their food source, close to your plants that needs pollinating. They need shelter from harsh elements, for nesting, to store food, to overwinter, as safe space from predators and pesticides. Some insects burrow to make nests or in barks of dried up plants. So please consider waiting for garden cleanup until Spring and mulch the ground with untreated wood chips.

Here in the Los Angeles area we are fortunate to have mild weather. No snow means there are always something growing. This makes it possible to always provide shelter for pollinators. For example, planting evergreen shrubs offers hiding space inside the foliage through the year.

In a large area, designing connected habitats is much better than small patchy ones. Think of a lush forest protecting its inhabitants. 

PLANTS SELECTION - MENU

Selecting plants is like creating a menu. A reputable restaurant menu offers different selections based on the season. And so does a sustainable pollinator garden - provide blooms through the years, I mean. 

When selecting plants think of varieties that give:

  • CONTINUOUS FOOD SOURCE - plants that blooms in different seasons

  • PLANT DIVERSITY - plants with different shape, color and size flowers

If you are growing a kitchen garden or an herb garden, let some of the herbs or the vegetables bolt (that means to flower). Bees go nuts over herbs flowers. I always see them buzzing about cilantro flowers, parsley, fennel and dills, celery, and carrots. Blooming herbs and vegetables are part of the “next-season” flowers that feed the pollinators.

We have circled back to the top. Remember why I compared the pollinator garden to a buffet restaurant? Different pollinators feed on different shape and size flowers due to their physiologies. 

An obvious example is hummingbirds. They have long thin beaks that’s build to feed on trumpet shaped flowers. A tiny insect could also feed on the same flower with a long small opening, but a Carpenter bee won’t be able to. 

So plant small flowers, cone flowers, tall flowers, trumpet type flowers and select varieties that blooms consecutively, not only do they feed the pollinators, the garden will look alive and beautiful all year long. 

COMPLETE THE DINING/GARDEN EXPERIENCE

The garden location is set, the plan is made and plant selections are done. Now to add the finishing touches. 

Busy working pollinators get thirsty too! A water fountain, a birdbath, a butterfly water tray, or you can combine all into one - a water fountain that serves as a birdbath, with pebbles on a shallow area for bees and butterflies to perch and take a sip of water without getting drowned. Nailed it!

How about a bees hotel? I am a tad scared of bees myself, so I would choose butterfly houses instead. They are functional and cute as garden decor.

If you have not, this will be the time to stop using pesticides or herbicides. Truth is, even organic pesticide would still harm some beneficial insects - even when applying it early morning or early evening when the pollinators are not around, there is still a small chance some residue might be left behind the next day. That said, be cautious, use organic deterrents as the last resort. I found after a year of very minimally using any spray in my garden, an ecosystem is established. Not that my garden is free of pests, but beneficial insects moved in and took residence to strike a balance. 

Anyway, I digress, back to the buffet garden.  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - WILDLIFE REFUGE CERTIFICATION & MONARCH WAYSTATION

Restaurants could get a Michelin star rating, you can get your pollinator garden certified! 

For the National Wildlife Refuge certificate, simply answer the questions to see if your garden meet their requirements, then you can purchase (consider this a donation to the organization) the sign that shows your garden is part of a Wildlife Refuge habitat. It is something nice to acknowledge your time and effort. I think it is a great tool to spread awareness not only regarding pollinators but also on living sustainably. 

Another certification, specific to the Monarch butterflies is called Monarch Waystation. You are basically creating the same pollinator garden we’ve just discussed, with the only additional criteria is there should be more milkweed to host the monarch butterflies - a minimum of 10 milkweed plants of at least 2 species. There is no minimum area requirement, but the monarch watch organization suggests that 100 sq ft area is the ideal minimum for a waystation.

ACTION PLAN

In summary, here are the steps you need to do to create a buffet, I mean, pollinator garden:

  1. Decide on location - sunny, visible

  2. Draw a garden plan 

  3. Planting map - specify heights and color preferences only

  4. Mark areas for different season blooms

  5. Select plants

  6. Plant and watch the garden grow abuzz

On number 3, unless you have specific plants in mind already, I suggest you enlist the help of the local nursery when making plant selections. They know what are available, can help you with plants grouping and they might have a service that would do the planting for you. 

Of course, you can also do the lazy gardener’s way: Simply buy a pack of mix wildflower seeds (find native plants seeds selection if possible), prepare the area and the soil - usually amend it with fertilizer, rake the ground, then spread the seeds. Rake again to cover, water to moist the soil, then sit back and wait.  The result mimics a natural meadow look. I kind of like it, actually. The only drawback to this style is you can’t control the mix, the spacing, and there is no telling what will germinate or not. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you get motivated to start your own pollinator garden. 

Kat is a Kitchen Garden Consultant, who started Blissful Growing in 2021 with the goal of helping others living a healthier and sustainable lifestyle starting with growing food at home.

Ready to start growing vegetables at home? Schedule your free discovery call today.

Follow Blissful Growing on Instagram: @blissful_growing

Catharina Soesetyo https://blissfulgrowing.com
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