The importance of native pollinators

The Midway community gardens are hatching a plan for the August event called the Parade of Community gardens on 8/21/2010. Its too soon to let you know about all the fun details, but it will involve six Midway community garden sites, and will give visitors a peek at pollinators. Even in our urban area, pollinators are vital. In this photo, my Leadplant is being visited by bees. at the Midway Greenspirit garden, the beehive there are increasing yields of tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, strawberries, , raspberries, apples, melons, sunflowers, pumpkins, plums, and squash both in the garden and for miles around. Native pollinators can be even more efficient at the job, such as bumblebees increasing yields even more. The Xerces Society is an organization looking into the importance of invertebrates. Below is some quality information from Xerces on how to encourage native pollinators which were developed for roadsides. While a small residential urban yard may need to be selective from this list of practices, most are applicable for our cities too. I see it in my own yard and in my community gardens regularly. Xerces research show that using native plants in a landscape can double the number of bee counts and increase the types of bees found there by 35%. So you want to get the most out of your food production gardens? Plant for the bees too!


From Xerces:

Eighty-seven of the world’s 124 most commonly cultivated crops are insect/animal pollinated. Between 60 to 80% of the world’s 250,000 flowering plants depend on animals for pollination.
In the United States, the National Research Council (2007) reported noteworthy losses of both managed and wild pollinators. Habitat loss, pesticide use, diseases, parasites, and the spread of invasive species are the major causes of pollinator decline. Threats to pollinator communities affect not only pollinators themselves but also natural ecosystems and agricultural productivity.


Key design factors & practices to enhance flower diversity for bee habitat around farms, gardens or roadsides include:

Planting choices
1) Use native wildflowers and grasses, with high densities of flowers.
2) Plant a minimum of 3 blooming plant species during each season.
3) Aim for season-long blooming plants, early and late season blooming plants are especially important.
4) Plant a range of wildflowers of varying colors and shapes. Bees mainly visit blue, white, yellow, and purple flowers.
5) Plant flowers in single species clumps for best results.

Providing Nest Sites
6) Warm season, clump-forming grasses provide bumble bee nest sites.
7) Have a mix of forbs and shrubs.
8) Don’t mow or hay entire grassy meadows or roadsides, leave some for pollinators.
9) Conserve habitat for rabbit burrows and groundhog burrows for bee nesting sites.
10) Reduce tillage and avoid plastic sheeting for ground nesting bees.

Reducing the Impact of Mowing and Spraying
11) Intensive mowing or grazing impacts abundance of bees.
12) Avoid or minimize the use of insecticides.

Pagoda Dogwood planted at Library last fall by HMEG

I went to check on the pagoda dogwood at the Library today and was surprised to find that not only had it leafed out, but the baby tree had friends! The tree was planted during the fall 2009 Hamline Midway Library celebration event. HMEG was there with information about trees and emerald ash borer (EAB). We also brought along a tree and with fellow neighbors' help, planted in front of the library where the ground's crew had approved. I am not sure who planted the tulips, but the act of volunteers planting a tree proved to be contagious.

Pagoda dogwood is a native Minnesota tree that is smaller in stature and is often found in understory situations. It has a horizontal branching that give it a Japanese feel. This particular pagoda came from the Como Corner Community Garden in SE Minneapolis where the pagodas there often produce seedlings.

Watch the HMEG Blog for more opportunities to plant trees over the next season.

Friends of Horton Park gearing up to get back into the native plants

Friends of Horton Park are excited to get back into the garden in 2010 season! The group is participating in the St. Paul Park Annual Spring Clean-up on Sat. April 10th. Please join us at 9:00 am at Horton for spring greetings, light raking of the gardens, trimming of old stems and trash pick-up. We may get some sightings of our first spring flowers? Bring a buddy and any raking supplies if you have them (otherwise provided).

Be a native plant enthusiast while enjoying the greater Horton Park with fellow Hamline Midway neighbors. Gardening sessions are typically monthly on Sunday's at noon until 2pm. Garden website is http://groups.google.com/group/hortonpark. FFI, or to get on this community garden's list contact hortonpark@gmail.com.

August is National Community Garden Awareness Month and 4th Annual Parade of Community Gardens

The 4th Annual Parade of Community Gardens!!
August 22nd - 10:00am to 2:00pm

There is a great group of community gardens participating this year on the Parade, all are bringing attention to & celebrating in these vital greenspaces in our communities! Forty community gardens from across the Twin Cities & greater Minnesota open their gardens to the public. Experience the unique and individual gardening efforts happening around the state. Gardens will feature a variety of attractions including music, cool treats, a goat, heirloom tomato festival, a beehive and more! Here are a couple profiles:

• At the Accord Community Garden in SE Como Minneapolis, visitors will find viola music, birthday cake and ice cream along with beautiful native plants under a one-of-a-kind sculpture.

• At the Midway Greenspirit Garden in the Midway, the feature will be the bees! Community beekeepers will be on hand to describe the symbiosis of having a hive in a community garden and what it entails.

The event is a free & self-guided tour, rain or shine. Details and brochure maps, in English & English/Spanish, can be found at www.gardeningmatters.org or call Gardening Matters at 612-492-8964.

Find more information on National Community Garden Awareness Month at OBSNews.com.

The Natives Are Restless

Here is a new favorite for my "blue" garden- Spotted Bee Balm, or Monarda punctata L. Thanks to Hannah from the Friends of Horton Park for suggesting this wacky-yet-beautiful native for the sandy soil here. As I was checking it out today, I saw a number of different wasps and bees doing their thing. It reminded me of my Leadplant earlier in the season. I saw 4 or 5 different types of bees on that native plant at one time (they move fast, so its a bit hard to count). The pollinator sightings would please the Horton Park community gardeners, many whom have taken a course on native pollinators this season.

My winged visitors highlight an important reason to plant natives in your landscapes- to provide food sources for our native insects. As we use more and more cultivars (like the petunias on the left of the monarda) the options for native pollinators become slim which impacts the foodweb that relies on those insects. The diversity of insects can also be on your side when it comes to bad bugs.

Just last night, as I was with a group of community gardeners in SE Como brainstorming ideas for a rain garden at Como Corner Community Garden (a project sponsored by SECIA and Mississippi Watershed Management Organization) and one of the gardeners had a book in hand by Douglas W. Tallamy called "Bringing nature home". As we envisioned raingardens, cisterns, dry creek beds, the group also insisted upon native plants and "ugly bugs". The word is spreading about the important role these insects have in the greenspaces of our cities and suburbs. Something the Horton Park community gardeners would cheer on.

Need more hands in your community garden? Part 2

Encouraging people to turn out for a community planting is a constant job for community garden leaders. Often, there is a substantial list of garden tasks, and too slim of hands to tackle them. Folks do want to participate, but often life is busy and there are many competing interests for our time.

This is a second in a series of posts that are focused on finding more hands for your community garden. Your efforts in planning these now will be a boon for your community garden later in the season (just when your regulars are getting tired out). Ten, one-time volunteers can take care of a task that would require 2 people to do all day. This fact makes these bigger work days more fun for your regulars as they both get to do something different and achieve sense of accomplishment feels like "Extreme Makeover". Examples of good tasks for a one-time larger group include trash pick-up, watering, mulching, deadheading, planting, edging beds, weeding fence lines, weeding out one particular weed. These are all simple, repetitive gardening techniques that you can show folks how-to do in a quick lesson.

This second tip in the "Need more hands" series suggests connecting to local colleges (and even high schools). Colleges and Universities can be bureaucratic to wade through, but there is usually multiple avenues to reach willing 15-20 year old volunteers. Many folks in the age group very much want to contribute, and a growing proportion want to learn sustainable gardening.


Here are some tricks to connecting to school crews:

• One tricky element about this suggestion is the fact that many student volunteers are tied to the academic year only, which means their available time does not greatly an overlap to the growing season. Its still worth recruiting however, because these volunteers are energetic! Further, their available dates are often the beginning and the end of the growing season, just when there happens to be bigger tasks related to garden openings and closings. Because of the differences in calendars, you will probably have to locate a new crew for each work date you arrange.

• You may likely need to plan these community service dates involving students well in advance, often in the previous term. This can be hard to remember in the spring rush of garden tasks that you also need to connect with your teachers for the Fall events! For example, This week, The Snelling Avenue Planter Project just made some connections for a Hamline University crew who will be performing community service, in early September. Another example in the Twin Cities is the U of MN's Welcome Week which involves their incoming freshmen in community service.

• To find a student volunteer(s) that will be able to volunteer repeatedly, you will need to find students required to do service for class credit (like Service Learning departments, course projects, capstone projects, senior thesis, and even Eagle scout & 4H projects). This type of student volunteer can tackle other garden needs beyond hauling wood chip such as making a flier, cleaning the garden's tools, write, research, apply for grants, and more.
  

• To begin tapping into to this potential source of volunteers, you need to ask amongst other organizations how they reach students, and also call around to the schools asking if their students do community service. Places to hunt on campus include service learning departments, student orientation events, student governments, student groups, restorative justice programs, resident housing, fraternities, community relations offices, alumni organizations, and of course, particular department offices (or even professors) which have majors that relate to your garden project.
  

• Once you find a route to interested student volunteers, try to make these connections institutionalized. It is important to find out the permanent staff person who is ultimately in charge of the students, and even try to get a face-to-face meeting with them. Many college departments rely on student workers to pull together community service projects. So once that student worker graduates or finish working at that department, then you have lost that connection. You will gain more return on your time investment if you can come back to that department/professor year-after-year. Once the college knows about your project and that community service will be successful, then they will start calling you!

Photo Caption: A service learner from the University of Minnesota looks over one of Horton Park's serviceberry trees scouting for insects amongst the native plantings installed by the Friends of Horton Park. Sarah worked for 24 hours in the community gardens over spring 09 term.

Horton Park Native Community Garden Reconvenes.

Friends of Horton Park reconvenes for the season. Be a native plant enthusiast while enjoying the greater Horton Park with fellow neighbors. Garden sessions are monthly on Sunday's at noon until 2pm. Dates are April 19th, May 3rd, June 14th, July 12th, Aug 9th & Sept 13th.

This little community garden was started by neighbors in the Midway to diversify the plantings at Horton Park in Saint Paul, and to provide an additional reason to enjoy the park. Horton's garden gatherings are a great place to see and learn about native plants that can be used in your landscape. We have prairie and savanna species as well as woodland species.

Garden website is http://groups.google.com/group/hortonpark. FFI, or to get on this community garden's list contact hortonpark@gmail.com.