Gardening for Bees, Butterflies and More
The 168-page book brings science and art to cover a range of gardens — from patio container gardens to larger-scale school and community gardens. Both food and ornamental gardens are included.
Dee Shore
NC State University
Feb 22, 2021
Excerpt:
Why did you write this book?
You often hear that one in every three bites of food you eat comes from food that has to be pollinated, and because we are destroying pollinator habitat, we need to be putting that back at a pretty fast rate. People might think that, at the residential scale, “Oh, those are really small spaces. They can’t possibly have a lot of impact.” But when you think about residential properties in aggregate, each contributing some pollinator habitat, the impact can be quite substantial.
So our theme through the book is, no garden is too small. I can plant one pollinator plant out in my yard and pollinators will come immediately. If someone has just a sunny balcony, that is enough room to create a mini pollinator habitat to support our bee friends.
Our book focuses a lot on our native pollinators. There are over 500 species of native bees in North Carolina alone. By and large, they are solitary dwellers so you don’t need to provide and manage a structure. They aren’t defending their young so they rarely sting.
You can support these native pollinators by just the plants that you include in your landscape. It’s funny that bees and humans want the same things out of gardens. Humans want plants that are really colorful, and provide drama (high diversity), and a lot of seasonality — flowering as much of the year as possible. Pollinators require the same: many different flower types in terms of flower size, color, and season of bloom support all the different sizes and kinds of bees.
Bees also need pollen and nectar the entire time they are flying (approximately March to October) so seasonality is critical. Lastly, high diversity in plant species is important so pollinators have all their nutritional needs met.
