May 24 Column: Pollinator Garden

You might recall that Bill and I created a pollinator garden last spring. What an adventure it has been! That’s the topic of this week’s garden column, which you can read in The Spokesman-Review. Pollinator project comes with lots of unexpected learning opportunities. (you can also read my column below the videos in this post)

In it, I discuss how the plants are growing and the many things I’ve learned from it. We’re into its second growing season. It’s been fun watching the plants come back to life and trying to figure out what some of them are!

I hope you’ll find the column interesting and fun to read. I also hope it will inspire you to create your own pollinator garden. They can be as large or small as you want. Watching the diverse types of insects visit it has been a highlight for me. They would be an excellent educational tool for the kids in your family. (and if you go to the bottom of this post, you can watch a video about our pollinator garden)

What’s in this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video? I talk about floating row cover and the many uses it has in the vegetable garden. We’ve been having a lot of rainy, windy weather over the past week. That means the garden is getting off to a rough start. The row covers are definitely earning their keep!

Here’s a video from last August, showing how our pollinator garden was doing:

Garden column about our pollinator garden:

by Susan Mulvihill

Last May, my husband and I embarked on a landscape adventure by creating a large pollinator garden. It involved removing a hefty amount of our front lawn and bringing in additional soil. Then framing the bed and planting an interesting variety of perennials and annuals. And, to be honest, doing a whole lot of weeding.

I’d been mulling over this project for a few years. A 2018 visit to Chicago’s Lurie Garden in Millennium Park provided the inspiration I needed. This marvelous 2 ½-acre rooftop garden was constructed over a series of parking garages. During our visit, I noted the abundance of beneficial insects and large numbers of monarch butterflies. I have to admit visions of those butterflies kept dancing in my head.

Our pollinator garden’s first growing season was a journey of discovery. We watched the plants grow and bloom while observing the variety of insects that visited them. While we didn’t see any monarchs, plenty of other butterflies stopped by.

It’s funny how a garden project like this has provided additional learning experiences that I wasn’t expecting. They are being duly noted.

Pollinator garden lessons learned

My first lesson was to buy local. I intended to only purchase plants from local nurseries but there was a slight change in plans. A full-color catalog from a Minnesota-based native plant nursery arrived in the dead of winter. Right when a gardener’s willpower is ebbing. After all, they carried many of the plants I’d seen growing in the Lurie Garden. Especially plants that the monarch butterflies loved!

I ordered purple giant hyssop (the butterflies’ favorite), wild white indigo, stiff and Canadian goldenrod. I also chose hoary vervain, Bush’s coneflower, and spotted bee balm. Unfortunately, those last three plants didn’t care for our growing conditions. In my defense, everything I selected was drought tolerant and hardy down to zone 4 or lower. But it underscores the importance of choosing natives from one’s own growing region. Thank heavens I planted a lot of those as well.

The importance of patience when growing a pollinator garden

I’ve also learned to be patient, which has never been my strong suit. Up until two weeks ago, I was certain all of the native milkweeds hadn’t made it through the winter. I was very close to pulling up last year’s remnants. Amazingly enough, they suddenly decided it was time to get growing and are looking great.

Patience is also required when one isn’t too sure about the identity of certain newly-emerging plants. I’ll study a seedling closely, wondering if it looks even remotely familiar, before deciding its fate. I’m embarrassed to admit that I pulled up several “weeds.” Then I remembered I’d planted some new legume seeds (Sainfoin) in that area a while back. Fortunately, a few of them escaped the two fingers of death.

I’ve also been doing a lot of legitimate weeding. The pollinator garden has been home to some annoying weeds that haven’t been a problem in the past. After all, our new plants need to get off to a good start. So I’ve been diligently employing the aforementioned fingers of death on a regular basis.

Which plants were the stars of last year’s pollinator garden? The Gloriosa daisies, both goldenrods, butterfly weed, Oregon sunshine, cutleaf penstemon, and three milkweed species (showy, swamp and whorled). Surprising enough, the purple giant hyssop has come back and is already living up to its name. Let’s hope the butterflies love it here in Spokane just as much as they did in Chicago.