Your Garden:
A Pollinator Haven
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On long summer evenings the pollinator garden is alive with activity. The perennials are in full flower, the sun sets late in a blaze of gold, and if you step outside, you'll find the air busy with bees moving from bloom to bloom, hummingbirds darting here and there in a whir of wings. It's a little piece of nature right outside your door. Bringing this kind of color and life to your own garden doesn't mean making it over from scratch. In this week's newsletter, we offer four simple steps to turn your yard into a pollinator haven.
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1. Pair Natives with Nectar Powerhouses
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Many of our coolest bees and butterflies depend on specific native plants, while others will visit almost anything that provides nectar and pollen. The most biodiverse gardens often include a mix of both: natives and generously blooming non-natives.
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Squash are native to the Americas, and so are their pollinators, squash bees.
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We carry a wide range of natives and native cultivars throughout the year. Explore the native listings in our Plant Finder to see a sample of what we typically grow. If you're interested in the current availability of a specific plant, feel free to call ahead and check availability before making the trip out.
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2. Choose Different Flower Shapes
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Some pollinators feed on nectar using long tongues, while others need a flat landing pad with easy access to pollen. Mixing the shapes of the flowers throughout your beds helps to satisfy the widest variety of pollinators. As a bonus, the combination of different flowers is more visually interesting, too.
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Our native cardinal flower and the ruby-throated hummingbird share one of nature’s most perfectly synchronized relationships. The flowers are almost exclusively pollinated by hummingbirds, and they bloom in sync with the bird's southern migration, offering a high-energy food source when they need it most.
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3. Keep Something Blooming
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Pollinators stay hungry all season! Bees and butterflies need a continuous food source from early spring through the first frost, and a garden that blooms in one big burst and then goes green will leave them, (and you), hungry for more.
The trick is to mix early, midseason and late blooming plants. If you need inspiration for filling in a green gap, our team would be happy to share ideas.
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Goldenrod is a keystone ecological species. Blooming in late summer and fall, it hosts all kinds of pollinators plus over 100 caterpillar species, and feeds seed-eating birds.
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4. Don't forget the caterpillars!
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Without caterpillar plants, there would be no butterflies.
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Milkweed is the best-known example of a caterpillar host plant, as it's the only thing monarch caterpillars can eat. But there are many, many more! Native asters for pearl crescent caterpillars, white turtlehead for Baltimore Checkerspots, and native oaks for an enormous range of moth species that, in turn, feed baby songbirds all summer long. A garden with host plants welcomes all kinds of pollinators home.
See an extensive list of host plants for butterflies and moths here. You might have more in your garden already than you think!
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Spicebush swallowtail caterpillars have markings to make them resemble short, stumpy snakes...at least to hungry birds. They feed on sweet bay magnolia, spicebush, sassafras, and tulip tree.
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Plant It, and They Will Come
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This showy landscape mixes shrubs, perennials and annuals for generous blooms. But it also incorporates natives, including black-eyed susans and echinacea, alongside caterpillar plants, including milkweed and dwarf dill.
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There's no need to rip out your existing landscape and start over. Even a postage stamp-sized garden will draw an amazing amount of life. If the idea of enjoying nature up close in your own yard appeals to you, stop in and let us help you make your landscape hum all summer long.
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Give a Rose a Forever Home
And spend those Hardy Bucks!
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Some of our finest roses are still waiting for a forever home, and with Hardy Bucks in full swing, it's the perfect time to snag one! Starting Friday, July 17 enjoy 60% off remaining David Austins, floribundas, grandifloras, and hybrid teas. Also, remember that you can also use your Hardy Bucks like cash from July 15–August 15 on all in-stock merchandise at the garden center or Stone Market.
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At Hoerr Nursery, our best resource isn't the plants themselves, it's the people who know them so well. This week, we want to introduce you to someone you might not have met yet: Ayden, who is moving from potting up perennials to helping folks find just the right houseplant. (His personal collection could put a greenhouse to shame!)
Every plant person starts somewhere, and for Ayden, it began with a gift.
"I was given an aloe vera by my aunt, and then it just kind of sparked from there," he said. That plant came into his life at 17 years old, and it's with him today. "It's still teeny," he laughed. But these days it has friends. At its peak, Ayden's collection topped 100 houseplants. These days it's settled to a "more manageable" 60. "My room is a jungle," he added.
Ayden was known at ICC for making the greenhouse there thrive. Now he brings the same expertise to our container cove, and it's the kind of real, hands-on experience that you only get by getting your hands dirty. So if you're not sure what to put in that spot by the window or your fiddle leaf fig is throwing a fit, stop by and see Ayden. Chances are he'll have some suggestions, as well as a story behind the answer.
🪴Happy gardening!
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