pollinators

plum blossoms on tree

Trees and Shrubs in a Pollinator-Friendly Yard

February 11, 2022

Insects are among nature’s more industrious workers, ensuring generations of bountiful and useful plants. We can help them do their work by creating a more pollinator-friendly yard. And when we do so, trees and shrubs have a strong role to play.

There are already many other benefits of trees. They serve as a carbon sink, helping to combat climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide. They mitigate the urban heat island effect, providing cooling shade. This has implications for heat stroke, asthma and other health problems. A sun-loving serviceberry might provide a canopy from 15- to 30-feet in diameter; maple or oak also serve as reliable shade trees providing upwards of 50- or 60-feet diameter cooling effects. And the canopy layer provided by a tree enhances the aesthetic appeal of a yard.

But many people don’t know how well trees shoulder the work in their ecosystem, adding value for wild bees and other pollinators. An oak tree, for example, supports many types of bird, caterpillar and insect species. 

To support pollinators, a garden should have plants with staggered bloom times so pollen is readily available. During the spring, many flowering trees offer early food sources. In fact, a flowering tree can provide as much forage during the spring as an entire garden, according to Planting for Pollinators, a guide on creating residential pollinator habitat from Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR). Crabapple, hawthorn, pagoda dogwood and plum (pictured here) are just a few examples that provide well for pollinators.

As far as choosing trees, remember that Minnesota stretches into three general planting zones, or biomes: Prairie (south and west), Coniferous (north) and Basswood (east). Choose from native species of flowering trees and shrubs that have co-evolved with local pollinators, adapting to each other, winter snow and summer heat, and natural predators. Again, BWSR’s Planting for Pollinators guide provides some ideas.

Finally, when thinking about the impact of your efforts to protect pollinators in your yard, remember that your efforts can play a role in a larger corridor of connected habitat. “Every homeowner can help rebuild pollinator corridors and one of the biggest impacts to achieve this would be adding trees and shrubs,” says Jennifer Moeller, a landscape designer and former project manager at Metro Blooms.

— Ken Jopp, St. Paul-based freelance writer

Additional Resources:

American Goldfinch on thistle

American Goldfinch: Joy on Thistles and Quilts

December 21, 2021

The following essay is by environmental educator Nick Voss, Education & Outreach Coordinator at the Vadnais Lake Area Water Management Organization. Photo by Nick Voss.

The American Goldfinch is a common neighborhood bird, familiar to many as a cheery visitor who’s happy to munch on an offering of birdseed. When paying a visit, they often announce their “po-ta-to-chip” call when flying overhead. But why has the goldfinch taken so kindly to parks and yards, and what does it do when there’s no feeder around? Today we’ll take a closer look at our friendly neighborhood goldfinch, and perhaps glean some insights on why it has such a cheery reputation. 

The American Goldfinch has a large nesting range from central Canada to the southern U.S, and winters along the Gulf Coast, into the Southwest, and south into Mexico. In the summer months, goldfinches are one of the latest nesting songbirds. Their patience to wait until late June–early July to lay eggs allows their primary food source — seeds —to be more plentiful and accessible. This reduces flight time for foraging, and saves valuable energy when raising their young. 

Yet goldfinches can still be a common sight in a Minnesota winter, as long as they have access to open water, plenty of seeds, and temperatures above zero degrees Fahrenheit. Like the American Robin, goldfinches can act as a local migrant, dipping just south enough into the central US when it’s really needed. To keep warm, goldfinches have been known to burrow in the snow or roost with birds of other species. 

A goldfinch’s favorite habitat includes grassy fields, forest edges, and open floodplains. These are spots where dense, shrubby, and seedy vegetation grows in the abundance of sunlight. Alders, birch, asters, coneflowers, and grasses such as big and little bluestem all bear delicious seeds for goldfinches, but their favorite food is often thought to be thistles. Pockets of dense vegetation are valuable for food and shelter, but they also make a home for spiders. While goldfinch don’t eat spiders, they use spider silk to fasten their nests to branches and twigs. Small rootlets, fluffy thistledown, and other plant fibers are woven into goldfinch nests so tight that they’ve been known to temporarily hold water. Gardeners and bird enthusiasts who are looking to not only attract goldfinches with a feeder but also recruit a regular nesting pair would do well to provide a pocket of dense, high-standing vegetation with a shrub or tree nearby. 

Goldfinches have been neighbors to gardens and pastures for generations. As our ancestors have watched and observed them, were they just projecting joyful traits onto their sunny feathers? Or are these birds, in whatever sense, actually joyful? 

All over the world, small seed-eating finches have accompanied open fields and crops for centuries. I can’t help but wonder if in the days of olde, perhaps one of my own ancestors was a farmer. Perhaps they were having a bad day and noticed a pair of European goldfinches. A farmer in the 18th or 19th century would likely have a keen understanding of the crop and any encroaching “weeds.” Goldfinches would have spent the bulk of their time on these uncultivated plants, particularly thistles and weeds —weeds that could actually be hindering a crop or showing nature’s unforgiving side. Surely to see admiration among finches would require overlooking their stubborn food source. Maybe some farmers chose not to make the leap altogether. How can I really say? Today, thistles are a bane to most any gardener, quickly yanked out and subject to complaints. Chances are even you, the reader, have accidentally brushed up against a thistle in mid-July, cursing at the sting. 

Yet the joyful sentiments of the goldfinch have lasted the test of time. Many a mug, quilt, puzzle, and the like are adorned with images of goldfinches perched on pink thistle flowers. Unlike this crusty and defensive plant, goldfinches have carried a sunny disposition for generations. Perhaps it’s that they’re known to not even fight back when preyed upon by cats, hawks, or weasels. Yet there they sing, there they bounce above the trees with a waving flight pattern, chittering on the upswing. 

Surely our ancestors from all corners of the world have noticed these contrasts and paradoxes in nature, and perhaps from them, found sparks of inspiration. The ancient landscape was ripe with struggle, but could it also be ripe with joy? When I picture the joy of my ancestors I get a vision of a deep and grounded joy. Seasoned by struggle and hard lessons learned, yet a testament to their resilience and survival and essentially the reason I get to be observing goldfinches today. 

Ross Gay provides a wonderfully simple summary of this paradox. In his Book of Delights he writes: “What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?” 

Today we know well the sorrow that spans across the landscape; personal tragedies, public health crises, a reckoning with injustices of the past and present, political turmoil, climate change, and all the rest. In such a world, harsh, prickly sentiments can be as abundant as a thistle’s thorns. Perhaps this is when joy is singing out like a goldfinch to be more than surface level. When goldfinch quilts aren’t just cute home decor but a reminder that in the face of absurdity and sorrow, our ancestors also chose joy. 

— Nick Voss, nick.voss@vlawmo.org

Evolution of a Yard: Conventional Turf to All Native Plants

August 23, 2021

For Dana Boyle, a Twin Cities metro resident, a Lawns to Legumes grant was part of a yard transformation which had been percolating over several years, and which she writes about below. We visited Dana and asked her some questions about her project. In the following video links, she talks about how she converted her lawn to Pennsylvania sedge and some of the ideas used in the design of her pollinator gardens. Her yard attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and bees — including, this year,  the endangered rusty patched bumble bee. Photos courtesy of Dana Boyle.

Video Links

The Lawns to Legumes program provides cost-share grants to Minnesota residents to create pollinator habitat in their yards. It comes through the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources.

A Yard Evolves

by Dana Boyle

Volunteering as a Minnesota Master Naturalist in the Blue Thumb booth at the MN State Fair several years ago planted the seed for this project. Then I read Douglas Tallamy’s book, Bringing Nature Home, which I learned about at a Wild Ones conference. It also helped to see a neighbor’s pollinator garden to know that shifting to pollinator plants was doable. Once the idea marinated, I became committed to change and moved from a turf yard to a native one.

The first year, I focused on the “margins” of my front yard. With the design help of my friend (and landscape architect) Diane Hilscher, I carved out turf and replaced it with flowering native plants and grasses. I made sure to edge that section in stone to show that it was intentional. The next year, I hired Douglas Owens-Pike to come up with a design that would allow us to rip out the remaining turf and replace it with native Pennsylvania sedge plugs. To enhance the look, he designed stone pathways and installed a front-yard vegetable garden. As an added benefit, I was given a Lawns to Legumes grant. 

The whole project was unorthodox for my neighborhood, which has a homeowners association with stringent covenants. This required a thoughtful approach, on my end, to gain the approval of our association board. They had questions and concerns but ultimately gave conditional approval to move forward.

The main front yard work was done last summer and, already, the yard looks lush and healthy — despite the intensely hot and dry summer. I know that some people in the neighborhood were initially thrown by the difference of my yard, but it seems from comments this year that they’re okay with it, now that the sedges have grown together to create a more uniform look. Others — especially younger homeowners and those with kids — were enthusiastically supportive from the start. It’s ever clearer that this is about changing culture, and that takes time and a gentle but firm hand in leading that within a conventional context.

_____________________________

Additional Resources

Mobilizing Minnesotans to Protect Pollinators

March 24, 2021

In 2020 many Minnesotans enthusiastically rose to the challenge of protecting pollinators in their yards through Lawns to Legumes, a state Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) program to empower people towards a more sustainable and pollinator-friendly Minnesota. Blue Thumb was selected to help put the program into action. A major goal of  L2L is to help Minnesota residents from all around the state plant part of their yard with native plants in the name of pollinator protection, with a special emphasis on protecting Minnesota’s state bee, the endangered rusty patched bumble bee.

We’ve been working on this project for over a year, conducting educational workshops for residents, matching program participants with coaches, and even partnering with communities on demonstration neighborhood projects that seek to transform entire neighborhoods into long stretches of pollinator habitat. We did this with much help from our partners including BWSR, conservation and watershed districts, Master Gardeners and other groups. Since the day this project began, we have been amazed by the level of interest Minnesotans have expressed in this program.

In the first week after opening the grant application portal, we received over 1000 applications, enough to successfully distribute all the funding designated for individual awards.  While this would be a major success on its own, we were delighted to see that the enthusiasm for this program never faltered, with almost 8000 Minnesota residents applying for individual support grants.  We awarded 850 grants, and recipients got to work.

Photos by Robert Hatlevig

As winter turned to spring, the ice melted away and Metro Blooms began tracking native plant installations across the state through the “Map Your Completed Project” page on the Blue Thumb website. All Minnesota residents who install native plants can map their plantings — not just L2L project participants. (If you haven’t mapped your project yet, we encourage you to do so!) In 2020, 156 Minnesota residents mapped their plantings, and this included 104 L2L participants who completed their projects before cold weather set in. Projects submitted to the map by L2L participants, or were inspired by the program, totaled over 350,000 square feet of native plantings and more than 600 trees!

L2L participants shared photos of their work. There was a wide variety of plantings, in all shapes and sizes, that covered the categories created by L2L. These included pocket plantings, pollinator lawns, pollinator trees and shrubs, and pollinator meadows. We even received a photo of a rusty patched bumble bee on an L2L planting!

Minnesotan investment in a greener pollinator future

Minnesotans have demonstrated strong commitment through their investment of time and resources. By the end of 2020, the L2L program had spent just over $33,000 to reimburse Minnesotans who had received an individual support grant and completed their projects.  Grantees were supposed to provide a 25 percent match (in materials or time, for example). But they went above and beyond expectations. In fact, residents who submitted for reimbursement had invested more than $76,000 out of their own pockets, more than double the amount awarded to them by the state.

By James Wolfin

The money spent as a result of this program helps to support the nurseries, contractors, and other green infrastructure professionals that help us reimagine how we can design our home landscapes.  Minnesota Native Landscapes, a Blue Thumb partner, saw an immediate impact.  “In 2020, MNL saw a large increase in general interest in native plantings and sales to residential homeowners. We know many of these individuals were Lawns to Legumes grant recipients seeking our L2L specific products, but we also know many were not selected for the grant and chose to seek out native plantings regardless,” said Bre Bauerly, outreach coordinator for MNL. “Our online sales of native plant kits, native seed mixes, and bee lawn seed were all considerably higher than previous growing seasons. I think regardless of whether the grants were awarded to an individual or not, they had learned more about supporting local pollinators through the program and felt compelled to incorporate native habitat into their surroundings.”

By James Wolfin

Participants also invested time. In the first 91 projects that were reimbursed, participants accumulated more than 2500 in-kind volunteer hours, or an average of 27.6 volunteer hours per person.  This included time spent on activities like removing turf and planting.  When we consider that the state of Minnesota values in-kind work at $25/hour, the time Minnesotans  spent working on their Lawns to Legumes projects is valued at over $62,000. 

Rusty patched bumble bee, by Anne Claflin

For some people, this initial work is only the beginning. Participant Michele Schluender took advantage of the many resources available through the program to educate herself and views her project as something she can add to over time, increasing the beauty and ecological value of her yard: “I attended a class with L2L and made use of the handouts and coaching to make sure that I was on the right track.  I doubled the size of my front yard prairie this summer and so far it looks great! I can’t wait to see it in the spring when it begins to fill in more.  My favorite flowers are the Prairie Smoke and Rattlesnake Master.  My long term goal is to hack away at the lawn bit by bit, year by year, until there’s nothing left except pollinators and pollinator-friendly native plants.”

Looking back over 2020, so unprecedented in so many ways, we are overwhelmed with the enthusiasm, energy and creativity of the participants, and by the incredible support from the agencies and organizations that worked together to make Lawns to Legumes a success in its first year.

Update: We are awaiting legislative action later this spring on the continuation of Lawns to Legumes.

James Wolfin, Sustainable Landcare Manager, Metro Blooms, James manages Lawns to Legumes’ individual grant program for Blue Thumb.

A Pollinator Project That Soaks in Rainwater

August 18, 2020

A Lawns to Legume Story

Another participant project from Lawns to Legumes, a Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources program supporting residents to create pollinator habitat in their yards through cost-share grants and other resources.

I had the good fortune to move next door to a landscape architect. Though retired, she was willing to take on small design projects for friends and neighbors. She and I had been collaborating on a plan for a pollinator-encouraging garden also capable of filtering water that feeds into the nearby Mississippi River. Unexpectedly, this gave me some parameters when the opportunity arose to apply to the Lawns to Legumes cost-share program.

Though I’ve been a gardener of sorts throughout most of my life, like everyone I have my knowledge gaps, as well as a tendency to buy based on price and aesthetics and figure out what to do with plants later. Though this has resulted in biodiverse gardens situated in the midst of urban concrete, it has also been a labor of love that’s overly wearing when one becomes AARP-eligible.
Between the November 2019 application deadline and March 2020, when notified of my selection for Lawns to Legumes funding, the world changed. My work with university undergraduates became home-based and, like many others, I was intensely focused on the sudden transition to distance-learning under COVID.

Thankfully, the Cities are in a Zone 4 growing region, meaning that my approved plan didn’t have to be implemented until the end of the academic year. Work resumed after virtual commencements. I confirmed utility lines and neonicotinoid-free growers, ordered some trees and shrubs for delivery and – shielded in homemade mask, plant/shrub list in sanitized hands – purchased the rest at local nurseries.

Then the plants sat, potted, on a shadier side of the house, while I pondered how best to remove 220 square feet of lawn that hadn’t been solarized the year prior. The turf, consisting primarily of a thick mat of creeping Charlie interspersed with clover, dandelions and plantain, and sub-turf realms notorious for harboring large river rock, made me question the wisdom of a sixty-something-year-old beginning this journey armed with a shovel. But COVID considerations prevented timely contact with landscapers, and the thought of wrestling a 185-pound gas-powered rental sod cutter into the trunk of a car was equally daunting.

Though my weight-lifting sixtyish partner would have helped wrangle a sod cutter, shovels remained our weapon of choice. With our landscape architect neighbor’s plan, along with a borrowed conversion ruler and spray paint, we outlined the kidney-shaped garden, marked where to put the plantings, and dug in. Our neighbor loaned us Korean hand plows that efficiently cut away the turf from the earth.

Serviceberry tree, chokeberry and snowberry shrubs, blue globe spruce, perennials — lady ferns, turtlehead, prairie clover, oak sedge and prairie dropseed — were all planted, along with some non-native companions. Then we moved to the next and less challenging task of rerouting water from a downspout. Rain events had occurred throughout digging, so we knew the soil was absorbing water well. We removed an inefficient section of downspout and put in a catch basin and shallow trench to transport rainwater to the lowest point in the garden, to moisture-loving turtlehead and ligularia. It was truly satisfying to see a successful trial run of water from a garden hose, and within days the aftereffects of an actual downpour.

Likewise, I took great pleasure in the final touches of installing the border and mulching. Bees arrived with the serviceberry blooms, followed by berry-seeking robins. Neighbors walking dogs, children or elders stopped to ask questions about the purpose of a raingarden, to admire the overall transformation of unused lawn or simply interact beyond weeks of isolation.

I look forward to seeing the garden as it evolves in coming years, and thank Lawns to Legumes, partner Josh, and neighbors, Laurie and Melissa, for inspiration and support in its establishment.

— By Karen Moon

(Photos provided by Karen Moon)

Creating My Pollinator Garden

July 10, 2020

A Lawns to Legumes Story

A recipient of a state Lawns to Legumes cost-share grant shares how she came to plant her pollinator garden. Lawns to Legumes, a program through the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, supports residents to create pollinator habitat in their yards.

I grew up on a small Minnesota farm and have always enjoyed being outside in nature. When I was a child, I would walk along the roadside ditch, collecting beautiful wildflowers to give to a local elderly friend, Mary. She loved the bouquets. While I visited, she would show me her small greenhouse with all her plants and flowers. She told me we would not have those beautiful flowers if we did not have bumble bees.

Last November I attended a local Rochester community ed class on pollinators and was  saddened to hear about the rusty patched bumble bee being on the verge of extinction. I wanted to know more, and spent time over the winter learning about bumblebees, their life-cycle and their habitat. In February, I applied to Lawns to Legumes for a grant to help pay for putting in a native pocket planting. This was an added incentive to move forward with my wildflower garden, though I was already hooked on the mission of bringing back habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee and other pollinators.

Planning

I created a site map of my yard, checked out my current plantings, sun exposure and available areas for a pollinator pocket garden. I also attended a Lawns to Legumes Resilient Yards workshop (via Zoom conference call). It was a great resource. We broke up into smaller groups to talk with a professional landscaper, a master gardener and three others like myself. One very important consideration: location, location, location!

Towards the end of April, it was oh-so-very-hard to not uncover my perennial flower beds.  But I had learned pollinators can use these beds for their nests. So I waited… and waited, week after week. I am glad I did. When I checked my perennials — lo and behold! — I found several ground bee nests. It was exciting to see the bumble bees go in and out! They were so delicate as they fluttered around the only flower blooming at the time, vinca. Then we got snow. So I was really glad I kept my perennial beds covered, which protected the flowers and the bumble bees.

For the pollinator garden, I finally decided on a triangle-shaped plot in the sunniest part of the yard. To choose plants, I looked through the articles I had been reading for a pollinator garden with flowers for a sunny location. On the last day of April, I went to my trusted local greenhouse to buy them. (Truth be told, I could have waited to buy, as I didn’t plant until mid-May, and had to move the plants in and out daily.)

May planting

I marked off the pocket garden plot. Then I laid out the flowers in their pots on the plot to get a visual of where they would be planted. I took a picture so I would know where to plant them later on. I also called Gopher State One to have them check on any services buried in that area. I’m glad I called! Cable, internet, and power come in from that corner of our yard. But we were able to work around them. 

My husband and grandson pulled out the sod. It was hard work! We put in wood edging using old landscape timbers, which made it look more like a flower bed and would help to contain weeds. Then it was time to fill it in. We added six bags of leaf compost, then two yards of soil — two trailer loads and then some. We put on landscaping fabric, cutting it longer on each end and stapling it to the outside timbers so it would stay in place and reduce grass and weeds. I know there will be weeds over time, but it will help the wildflowers to not have to compete for a few years.

We laid mulch chip bags on the landscaping fabric, with the flowers around and on top. This allowed me to walk/kneel on the bags so as not to compact the soil more than necessary. I cut holes in the fabric, planted, and watered the plants, then put mulch chips around them. Two pollinator signs from my daughter-in-law were the finishing touches. Overall, it took us one day to put in the pollinator garden.

The garden grows

At first it looked bare. I had planted the flowers as recommended, 1 to 2 feet apart. But I watered, and the weather cooperated by raining several times per week the first two weeks. Afterwards, I continued to water in the evenings. I found the mulch chips kept the moisture in.

A few weeks later, the plants looked stronger and bigger. Some even had flowers. I have not seen any bumblebees around the pocket garden yet, but I know they will appreciate the flowers, which will be blooming until late fall this year.

I continue to see bumblebees in my other perennial flower gardens. I also mow our grass on the highest setting, allowing them to have a place to rest and some sweet clover to pollinate when my wild flowers are not blooming. I am looking forward to adding a rain barrel, and maybe a rain garden or two in the future. Now that I know the rusty patched bumble bees may come to my yard, I want to welcome them!

— By Sheryl McLaughlin

 

Sheryl’s Plant List

Plant
Placement
Bloom time
Butterfly Milkweed Asclepias tuberosa full/part sun June–Aug
Button Blazing Star Liatris aspero full/part sun July–Oct
Prairie Spiderwort  Tradescantia bracteata full sun May–July
Grey Goldenrod – Solidago nemoralis  full/part sun Aug–Oct
Wild Bergamot  Monarda fistulosa Full/part sun July–Sept
Purple Coneflower Echinacea purpurea Full/part sun July–Oct
Joe Pye Weed Eupatorium purpureum shade/part shade July–Sept  
Sky Blue Aster Aster oolentangiensis full/part sun Aug–Oct