Jericho, Vermont Photos: Residents Plant Jericho Community Pollinator Garden

Friday, August 3, 2018

Residents Plant Jericho Community Pollinator Garden

Gardening for Pollinators

Sabina Ernst of the Jericho Conservation Commission successfully applied for a grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Sciences, and Jericho was chosen for a pollinator garden, workshop, and evening lecture on August 2, 2018. The event was sponsored by the Jericho Town Conservation Commission.

This is the tenth of twelve Pollinate New England workshops presented by Mark and Annie in New England, the second in Vermont. The goal is to make landscapes more friendly to native pollinators.

Twenty-two percent of New England's 2400 plant species are in danger.

New England Wildflower Society implemented the Pollinate New England Program. Mark Richardson is the Botanic Garden Director of the New England Wildflower Society. Annie White is an ecological landscape designer and an adjunct professor in landscaping at UVM.

Sabina Ernst, Tom Baribault, Peter Grey, Grace Nelson, and Luke Dowley (all of Jericho) prepared the roughly 150' plot in May. They laid out cardboard covered with wood chips to kill the turf to make room for the perennial plants. The new pollinator garden is on town property just south of Jericho Country Store on the same side of the road as the store.

On the day of the event, 13 folks engaged in an outdoor class about pollinators and pollinator gardens. They also helped plant the over 150 *NATIVE perennial pollinator plants (about 1 per sq foot), laying out compost, breaking up the bottom third of the plant plugs, planting them, and then covering the area with mulch and watering the plants. Identification signs were then added to each group of plants.

*New England Wild Flower Society grows plants from NATIVE sustainable SEEDS harvested in the wild.

Outdoor class preceded the plantings.

SOME INFO FROM THE TALK (notes taken by Maeve Kim)

There’s been a lot of publicity about the decline of honey bees, which are important but non-native and not really wild (since they’re kept by and managed by people), but there have also been declines in many kinds of native pollinators including bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and moths. (There are approximately 275 native bee species in Vermont.) Flies are the second most important group of pollinators, recognizable because they can hover which none of our bees are able to do. Bees come to plants to get pollen so they can make food for their young. Other pollinators pick up and distribute pollen incidentally as they’re getting nectar.

Threats to these creatures include parasites, viruses, winter kill and pesticides (as well as the honey bee “colony collapse”).

Some good news is that pollinator habitat restoration works, even on a small scale, even in urban settings.

The key components of pollinator habitat restoration:

Flowers attract insects with nectar and pollen, and leaves for Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) to eat in their caterpillar stage.

Nesting sites for solitary bees and other pollinators

Relief from stressors such as pesticides – Neonicotinoids are widely used and very popular systemic pesticides that many nurseries apply to plants so they can sell them as “pest-free”. AVOID PLANTS TREATED WITH THESE POISONS!

Site Selection for Your Pollinator Garden

Be on the lookout for invasives and address them as best you can.

Reference the VT Invasive listing.

Look at microclimates: Do you have areas with eastern exposure that get morning sun? with southern exposure for afternoon sun? Do you have wind protection?

Know where your utilities are. (Contact DigSafe by dialing 811.)

Know your soil! Send a sample to a cooperative extension agency to be tested. Ask for info about pH as well as about the % of organic material there is in the soil.

Site Preparation

If you’re starting from the lawn, you’ll have to get rid of the sod one of these ways:

“sheet mulch” – Layer on cardboard and/or thick newspapers and top with wood chips or bark mulch. Leave for a few months.

- “lasagna mulch” – Make green layers of food scraps alternating with brown layers of wood chips or bark mulch.

- “solar mulch” – Put down plastic (preferably heavy clear plastic, like that used in hoop houses, and preferably UV treated so it doesn’t easily break down) and let it sit on the section of lawn during the hottest months of the year. This steam pasteurizes the soil.

- Mechanical sod removal – not recommended because it removes a lot of useful topsoil along with the top layer of sod

- Herbicides such as Round-Up – strongly not recommended!

- Rototilling – also not recommended at all (brings up weed seeds).

Planting Design

- A plant for every square foot (plus or minus) cuts down on weeding).

- Whenever possible, choose plants that have been cultivated from wild-gathered seed.

- Choose the smallest plants you can find (not the smallest in their mature state, but the smallest pots).

- Plan so there’s something blooming throughout entire growing season.

- Plan a combination of tall and bushy, coarse leafed and feathery, etc.

Class included a visit to the flower garden in front of the library.

Other Bits of Info from Mark and Annie

Always think of fertilizers as pollutants. Use sparingly if at all. Provide nutrients by adding organic materials, not by adding fertilizer.

The more decomposed organic material is, the fewer free nutrients there are to be released as pollutants into aquifers or the air.

Purple Loosestrife is a good plant for one kind of bumblebee that has recently seen a huge gain in population – but this is unlucky for other kinds of bumblebees whose food sources are being

replaced by the invasive loosestrife.

The endangered Karner Blue butterfly (lycaeides melissa samuelis) requires native sundial lupine (lupinus perennis). Its larvae don’t feed on other kinds of lupine, including the popular and much taller western lupine that is found in so many Vermont gardens and alongside highways in the state. If you want lupine in your garden, make sure to get native sundial lupine.

Many Lepidoptera create cocoons under leaf litter – so leave your leaves!

Cultivar – means cultivated variety – something that some human has found attractive in some way and has propagated (often by cloning). When we buy plants that appear to be native to our area, we’re often buying cultivars that actually don’t do well here.

Class instructions included garden tools and their proper use - for both effectiveness and (ergonomics) to minimize sore bodies.

A watering wand with thumb forward / backward motion
is a good ergonomic watering tool.

Mark provided instructions on how to break up the bottom third of the plant plugs to help ensure the roots grow out and not continue in the shape of the container they were in.

Mark displays an example of how potted woody (shrubs and trees) are often root-bound. If this is not addressed before planting, the tree or bush may die in a few years as the roots continue to grow around themselves essentially strangling the plant.

Recommendation: potted woody plants are bare rooted (remove all soil) and loosened or, if necessary, cutting any roots that might otherwise not grow out away from the plant.

Perennial plant plugs about to be planted in the Jericho Pollinator Garden.

Edgers are a good tool to line the garden and to keep weeds from entering from the perimeter.

New plantings like these require one inch of rain per week for the first year. A rain gauge is a good way to monitor the amount of rain that occurs naturally (from the clouds). Heavy watering is better than frequent light watering.

Plants include: Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed), Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed), Baptisia tinctoria (yellow wild indigo), Chelone glabra (white turtlehead), Eutrochium maculatum (spotted Joe Pye weed), Eupatorium perfoliatum (boneset), Fragaria virginaina (wild strawberry), Iris versicolor (blue flag iris), Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot), Penstemon digitalis (foxglove beardtongue), Pycnanthemum tenuifolium (narrow leaf mountain mint), Rudbeckia triloba (three-lobbed coneflower), Solidaga adora (sweet goldenrod), Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England aster), Symphyotrichum novi-belgii (New York aster), Verbena hastata (blue vervain), Zizia aurea (golden Alexanders), Carex appalachica (Appalachian sedge), Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem).

Some of these plants support native butterfly or moth species during their larval stage.

See more information about these (pollinator kits) plants on NE Wildflower Society's web page. "Our Native Plant Pollinator kits are part of New England Wild Flower Society’s Pollinate New England program, which aims to raise awareness of the pollinator crisis and to teach and encourage homeowners to plant diverse, systemic pesticide-free native plants that support a wide variety of pollinators throughout their life cycles. To learn more about how you can help support the creatures that pollinate all wild and cultivated plants, visit our Pollinate New England web page." ~NEWFS

SEE RESOURCE LISTING FOR MORE INFORMATION on Pollinators, gardening for pollinators at the bottom of this posting.

No garden is too small, no pollinator insignificant; let's make a patchwork of Gardening for Pollinators - for the health of our local region and for the refreshment and enjoyment of our souls!

~Bernie

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Commentary:

When putting together a pollinator garden it is extremely important that they are put in places where there is no close, even moderate traffic volumes, exceeding say- 20 mph or so. Else, these flower gardens become a death trap to many butterflies and other insects that are attracted to the garden. This source of significant mortality has been documented for the Karner Blue. There is no reason to assume it would not be a mortality factor with many of our native butterflies. Monarchs typically fly in a rather slow fashion, relative to many other species of butterflies, so I assume mortality from collisions with vehicles would be an important factor for that species (though I know of no studies that document this source). In fact, one often useful way to tell the similar Viceroy from the Monarch is by the distinct difference in their patterns of flight.

The exact location of where the pollinator garden is situated becomes one of the most important factors to consider before starting a pollinator garden. It should be away from high traffic areas, as indicated above, and best put away from heavy pedestrian traffic, as well, and away from concrete footpaths as much as possible. It should include a variety of micro-climates and micro-habitats as well, to maximize the chance, assuming the food plants are available, of attracting a great variety of butterflies-and even moths.

Hats off to the Jericho group that has planned and developed the Jericho pollinator garden. It's a great addition to any community. A real learning tool to learn more about these extremely important insects that are so vital to our lives, not just objects of beauty to admire for just that reason.

I personally love to watch the mutual interaction of different adults of various species of pollinators, as they move from flower to flower in a pollinator garden. Skippers skip, non-skippers generally don't, and one can often notice, with close observation, both intraspecific (between individuals) and interspecific (between species) competition among the various “players” as they go through the daily activities of their lives. One being, filling their respective “tanks” with nutrient goodies so that they can propagate the next generation.

New information has shown that many other insects besides just “bees” (Family Apidae) are much more important pollinators than ever suspected. This includes many species of flies (Diptera). I find this interesting because it is the general view among many, that flies in general, are detrimental to the human condition. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Don H. Miller, Prof. Emeritus, Vt. State Colleges, Williston.

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Notes from the evening lecture

Wild Strawberry - a good alternative to a grass lawn

Note: if the name has a quotation mark around it, the plant is a cultivar. In general, studies indicate that pollinators prefer native species vs native cultivars or hybrids.