Insects with a pollinator garden

In an effort to encourage pollinators around our property, we landscaped the side of a corrugated steel drive-shed with pollinator-attractive plants.

Pollinators play an invaluable and irreplaceable role in our natural and man-made ecosystems. Bees are perhaps the best-known pollinators, but not the famous do-all-the-job bees (brought over from Europe by early settlers); It is the humble-bees who perform this service. Where we live in southern Ontario, over 400 wild bees make their home. Most of these bees are more efficient pollinators, covered with fine hairs on their bodies, and prefer pollen instead of honey. These busy bees crawl over a flower to collect pollen and cover themselves with a dusting of the same material that sticks to a Velcro-like coating. The bees mix the pollen from this new flower with the pollen from the previous flowers they visited and fly to another flower.

Pollinate our gardens

Other insects also pollinate our gardens and crops. Butterflies, moths, wasps, and hoverflies all carry pollen between flowers. Humble caterpillars, moths, and butterflies may be pests when they feast on our crops or flowers, but their fragility and beauty as adults, to say nothing of the pollination services they perform, can make us forget their humble beginnings. Wasps also visit flowers for nectar, and as they move from flower to flower, they also carry pollen. But there is another service provided by wasps; Larvae feed on caterpillars, which damage our garden plants and help control pests. Like wasps, hoverflies act as pollinators and pest controllers. Adults drink nectar from flowers and larvae feast on aphids and other soft-bodied insects. Birds can also pollinate; Hummingbirds specializes in drinking nectar from flowers and, as a result, spread pollen between plants.

Whether you want a productive vegetable garden, berry patch, or orchard - we all rely on pollination. At our country house, we created a special garden designed to attract pollinators. Two years ago we started our pollination program with four beautifully constructed (by my husband) cedar trellises on the wall of our drive shed. The garden is a narrow area filled with sun-loving plants that attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees.

In the new garden, we planted the following native species: butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnate), and a new variety of aster (Aster kickin' lavender), as well as honeysuckle (Lonicera x heckrotti ‘Goldflame’) up the trellis. We've also included some non-native but pollinator-friendly plants, such as Purrsian blue catmint (Nepeta faassenii), deep rose enhanced salvia (Salvia nemorosa), and Grape Gum Peapalm (Monarda 'Grape Gumball' PPAF). To enhance the site's appeal, we hung a honey feeder for hummingbirds and installed a small bird pond filled with pebbles, as well as a shallow water feature that allows the insects to safely land and drink without fear of drowning.

Hummingbird forages

We are happy to say that our efforts have been rewarded. A male ruby-throated hummingbird forages and patrols the flowers. Butterflies that feed from flowers include Monarch, Red-spotted Purple, Giant Swallowtail, and Red Admirals. Fortunately, there is always something blooming in our garden and the colorful and fragrant flowers provide countless bees, wasps, beetles, and hoverflies. All this activity attracts predatory insects and we see spider webs strung between stems and dragonflies.

When blooming, milkweeds are a magnet for insects. The kids and I took advantage of these guests to do a nature lesson as part of our homeschool; We pulled out insect guides to identify some bees and then sketched them in our nature notebooks. In late summer the same milkhouses provided monarch caterpillars. Nang s found a chrysalis and tracked it for over three weeks. The morning after it hatched, we found two more butterflies hatching from nearby chrysalids, hidden in foliage that we hadn't noticed before.