Feeding our friends
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Dot Zanotti Ingels
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Picture the perfect summer picnic. The table is overloaded with colorful choices of yummy treats. You walk around the table a few times and enjoy sampling the choices. So, pollinators that visit your garden are looking for the same things. Birds, bats, bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, and other small mammals that pollinate plants bring us one out of three bites of food. They also help sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants to reproduce.
This electric blue penstemon is a California Native. Photo: PlantmasterA pollinator is anything that helps carry pollen from the male part of the flower, called the stamen, to the female part of the same or another flower, the stigma. This movement of pollen needs to occur for the plant to become fertilized and produce seeds, fruits, and young plants. Some plants are self-pollinating, and others may be fertilized by pollen carried by wind or water.
Some pollinators, including many bee species, intentionally collect pollen. Others, like butterflies and birds, accidentally move the pollen as pollen sticks to their bodies while drinking or feeding on nectar in the flower blooms. Then, as they travel from flower to flower, they unknowingly transport the pollen resulting in pollination.
Pollinator populations are in decline due to a loss in feeding and nesting habitats, climate change, and the misuse of chemicals. We are all familiar with the plight of the Monarch butterflies. In 2019, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to list four species of California bumble bee under the California Endangered Species Act, including the Western bumble bee, Crotch’s bumble bee, Franklin’s bumble bee, and the Suckley cuckoo bumble bee. Pollinators need our help now more than ever.
This electric blue penstemon is a California Native. Photo: PlantmasterOne way to add more pollinator habitat is to consider replacing or reducing your conventional lawn area. There are pollinator-sustaining plant choices for most garden conditions. While most pollinator-supportive plants do well in full sun, many varieties will do well in half-sun spots in the garden. Try Zinnias, Bright light cosmos, Sulfur cosmos, Clarkia, Prairie aster, and Penstemon. Some pollinator-supportive plants will even thrive in the shade, for example, Mexican pitcher sage or Calamintha.
If you are looking for drought-tolerant, very low-water-use plants attractive to pollinators, try Coyote mint, Agastache, Lupine, Phacelia, Gaillardia, Tidytips, or Red Buckwheat.
The Marin Master Gardeners are here to support your efforts to bring an amazing pollinator picnic to your garden. The MMG Pollinator Grow Team has seeded thirty-five varieties of pollinator-sustaining plants. Some are natives, and some are non-native species. They are also growing a few herbs. They have also seeded Asclepias fascicularis, a narrow-leaf milkweed. Milkweeds are the larval host plants for Monarch butterflies, and this species is probably the most critical host plant for Monarch butterflies in California. Milkweed gardeners need to be prepared for the plant to be eaten by Monarch caterpillars, but the presence of beautiful Monarch Butterflies will reward them.
The Pollinator Plant Sale will be held on March 4, 2023, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM at the Falkirk Greenhouse, 1408 Mission Avenue in San Rafael. Marin Master Gardeners will be selling 35 varieties of pollinator plants that provide nectar and pollen to bees and butterflies. These plants do well in Marin gardens and have been selected to provide a year-round food source for pollinators. The plants were grown from seed in the greenhouse at the Falkirk Greenhouse in San Rafael and will be sold in 4-inch pots for $5.00 each. Purchase requires cash or checks only. This in-person plant sale is open to the public.
The Marin Master Gardener Pollinator plant sale will have 35 varieties of plants that do well in Marin. Photo: Becca Ryan
