Creating a diverse pollinator garden: Tips from field guide author and HCT naturalist Peter Trull

By Peter Trull

These days, and over the last several decades, there has been an increased interest in the relationships between birds, pollinators, and wildflower gardens.

While people are becoming more interested in these interrelationships, there has also been a growing interest in supporting pollinators and the conservation of pollinators by planting gardens of native wildflowers.

When I mention the word “pollinators,” I’m referring to virtually all birds and insects that spread pollen from one plant to another, thereby, fertilizing if you will, various plants to produce flowers and seeds.

These pollinators include; butterflies and moths, bees and wasps, flies, beetles and birds. That is, any flying organism that moves from one plant to another with pollen from various other plants clinging to, or attached to their body. In reality, we could also include mammals as they move through various stands of wild plants during their daily routine.

I recommend that you follow these steps in October:

—Decide where in your yard, preferably a sunny spot where you would like to have a bright, wildflower garden. You may decide to have it as big as a tabletop, or the size of a room where you live.

Cardboard composting

—Start by collecting plain brown corrugated cardboard. I just broke up a bunch of cardboard boxes and laid them out on my lawn in the size that I wanted for my gardens. You can do this the day before predicted rain, or you can simply lay down the cardboard, cover it with stones to keep it from blowing away and then drench it with water.

—Once the cardboard is saturated, keep it wet for a week or two, and then cover it with 2 to 4 inches of good soil, compost, or whatever it is that you like to plant in. Over the course of the next week or so, keeping the new garden wet will help the cardboard decompose and absorb the soil. You now have a new garden ready to plant.

—My recommendation for native, wildflower seeds found in the northeast is an online site called “American Meadows”.  

–Visit the site and choose your preference of seeds. When you receive them, wait until after the first frost, then spread the seeds on the soil, and walk away.

—Keep the gardens moist in April, May and June and watch the wildflowers germinate and grow.

Enjoy the beauty, don’t use insecticides

Remember, they are called “wild” flowers. Nobody plants them, they just fall from the wilted, fading flowers during autumn and winter so as to reseed for the next spring. That’s what you’re doing when you spread the seeds over the dirt in your garden.

If you follow the above steps; laying down cardboard, keeping it wet for several weeks, letting it break down, covering it with good dirt and dropping seeds, you will enjoy a beautiful, productive and beneficial pollinator garden of local northeast wildflowers beginning the next spring.

The steps I provided above are all you really need to grow the flowers and attract the pollinators. Have fun and enjoy the beauty. And don’t spray your yard with insecticides, they kill everything. Our objective here is conservation, preservation and good practices.

Now let’s look at and learn about some of these beautiful little pollinators that are working so hard. I have recently been studying the incredible diversity of tiny bees, wasps and flies that pollinate the native wildflowers and cultivated flowers in my gardens.