The great variety of plants in the Medicinal Herb Garden attracts a wide range of pollinators, mostly insects but also two species of hummingbirds. Throughout the year there are Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna). How such a small bird survives our winters is a cause for wonder. To see them in the Medicinal Herb Garden, linger by the Agastache mexicana, Monarda didyma, Penstemon barbatus, Leonotis nepetifolia, Lonicera ciliosa or Lobelia cardinalis. Do an image search for these plants and you’ll get an idea of what attracts hummingbirds. They seem to be everywhere at once in flower season (the peak here is June-September). If you’re lucky, you might even see a rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) passing through from its winter home in Mexico. A few times I’ve seen one in the garden, usually in May. The distinctive thrum of their wings, louder than the Anna’s, is what alerts me to them. Keep your eyes and ears open.
But enough about hummingbirds. It’s the bees that need our help. We have the flowers they seek in our gardens. But we can help make their visits more productive and less stressful and even provide homes for some of them. The more time they spend traveling and recovering from their travels, the less time they spend pollinating.
Across the street from the Medicinal Herb Garden, UW entomologist, Evan Sugden has several colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera). In the summer, Evan teaches a class on beekeeping. What a great, practical way for students to learn about entomology. Hats off to Evan Sugden! His honeybees have a hive to return to (colony collapse disorder aside) every day and pollen and nectar from the flowers for food. But they need water. Luckily there are safe watering holes near the hives. A water source for bees should have places for them to safely perch while drinking. A dish or birdbath with islands of rocks or pieces of wood or anything else they can cling to is ideal. Put one in your garden to help your neighborhood bees of all kinds.
Honeybees are welcome in and essential to the Medicinal Herb Garden, but there are also many different solitary bees all around, though they often go unnoticed. Some solitary bees nest in wood or pithy stems, some nest in the soil, under bare ground, and others nest in small cavities in the ground or wherever works. These solitary, native bees are what Buchmann and Nabhan wrote about in their classic book, The Forgotten Pollinators. They are unsung heroes and they’re pulling their weight as pollinators while the honeybees struggle with so many health problems. Let’s give them a leg up!
If you’re interested in enhancing pollinator habitat in your yard, check out these links:
http://www.xerces.org/enhancing-habitat-for-native-bees/
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/gardening.shtml
Stay tuned. Later this spring, I’ll interview Evan Sugden to get his thoughts about bees and other pollinators.
Bee hive with extra insulation, for Evan’s honeybees across the street from the garden
Wood-nesting bee house on the edge of the garden
Bundle of pithy stems wired to a tree in Cascara Circle, for wood-nesting bees.
Last year’s dead growth of pithy stems, broken up and left to protect the soil and provide habitat for solitary bees and other insects as well as shade-loving earthworms. Unless a plant is diseased, I break and drop the previous year’s stems in the bed each spring. This is Inula helenium (elecampane), an important lung plant. Can you spot the first leaves emerging through the jumble of decaying stems?
pollinators, yes
no history without them
think long about that
See you in the garden