Your Garden is an Ecosystem
What you choose to plant in the garden matters. Your garden is an ecosystem and you are one, a major one, but one of the ecosystem's components. Each change you make to the garden matters. When you add or remove plants you impact all the other beings that rely on your garden for food and shelter.
Ecosystems are complex, possibly too complex for us to be able to understand all the connections and actions and interactions that take place within them.
If we do not know what will happen if something changes, it makes no sense to rush in and make those changes.
Bob Ewing photo.
Pollination:
Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anthers of a flower to the stigma of the same flower or of another flower. Pollination is a must if the flower is to be fertilized.
Fertilization is necessary if the plant’s flower is to produce seeds and seeds are needed to produce more plants.
The honey bee is not a native to North America and our growing dependence upon the honey bee to provide pollination services as lead to our forgetting the native bees that are able to perform this function and in some cases even better than the honey bee.
Now, one way that the gardener can attract native bees such as the bumblebee or mason bee is to create a garden that appeals to them.
This is a fundamental principle for attracting any type of wildlife whether it is, bee or butterfly the garden will design a garden that meets the needs of the beings and they will move in.
The Native Plant Garden
You do not have to include only native plants in the garden. If your garden is already established, no problem, add a few natives in the border or at the back, wherever they work best in the overall design.
If you include native plants that appeal to native bees and other pollinators in your garden you will be encouraging the native bees to visit and that is all you need them to do, drop by and do their thing and then move on.
If you grow vegetables on any scale adding some bee plants to the edges of your vegetable patch will bring the pollinators your way.
When you garden in this ecological manner, and by that I mean you think about creating an ecosystem rather than a garden, you move closer to being one with Nature and serving a vital role in the food chain that goes beyond personal consumption.
What the gardener is in fact doing is creating an ecosystem that meets the pollinators' needs. The pollinators reward the gardener by fertilizing the plants and thus making sure they grow and produce flowers or fruit.
The best way to attract native pollinators is first finding out what pollinators are native to where you live. Then find out what attracts them or what plants they like. A trip to the public library can help or horticultural society or perhaps even a garden centre.
The third step is to design a garden that incorporates a few of those plants that the bee is attracted to and plant them.
Creating a native plant garden is no different than creating any other garden. If you are new to gardening or looking for a refresher check this post out.
