Take The Challenge: Plant a Yard in Your Yard

Now that Spring has arrived, the growing season will be here soon!  At URWA, we've become especially interested in supporting native pollinators in recent years.  In fact, the speaker at our upcoming membership meeting (Monday, March 28th at the Clarence Dillon Public Library in Bedminster at 7:00 p.m.) will feature Dan Cariveau, a Rutgers scientist who is investigating the outcomes of pollinator restorations implemented on private lands in New Jersey.

It makes a great deal of sense to include plants that attract and feed native pollinators in our landscapes at home, on school campuses, in public parks and our places of work.  Native pollinators (bees, butterflies, moths, birds and even bats are included in the long list of native animals that carry pollen and thus help fertilize both ornamental and commercial plants in our state) play a tremendous role in fruit and vegetable production, so they provide benefits to all of us who enjoy fresh New Jersey produce!  In fact,animal pollinators are needed for the reproduction of about 90% of flowering plants and one third of human food crops.

If the concept or planting a garden patch specifically designed to attract and support native pollinators seems daunting, we have an idea for you.  Consider starting small -- how about planting just a yard in your yard?  By that we mean taking a one square yard patch of lawn and converting it to a garden for native pollinators.  Dig up the grass and plant a few varieties of flowers and shrubs that will bloom throughout the spring, summer and early fall months in your new little garden.  You have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting what plants to use -- of course you'll want to make sure they are native to our region.  An excellent resource to consult is Selecting Plants for Native Pollinators:  A Regional Guide for Farmers, Land Managers and Gardeners in the Eastern Broadleaf Forest.  This guide describes many native plants, what they look like, what conditions they need (sun,shade and the like), when they bloom and which pollinators they support.  using it will help you quickly select which plants you want to include in your "yard within your yard". 

Your new pollinator patch will undoubtedly provide you with a great deal of pleasure.  From the colorful flowers on the plants to the fascinating and often beautiful pollinators that visit them, you'll enjoy watching what goes on as the months go by.  In fact, we won't be at all surprised if you get hooked and decide to learn more about gardening with native pollinators in mind, sign up to participate as a citizen scientist in the Great Sunflower Project, and/or devote more yards of your yard to pollinator habitat next year!  

For more information about native pollinators and what you can do to support them, vjoin us on Monday evening at our membership meeting and visit one or more of the web sites we've mentioned already, or one of these below:

The Xerces Society
The Natural Resources Conservation Service