Pollinator

Many gardeners are starting their fall garden and landscape clean-up - which is good and bad. Garden sanitation, if insects or diseases were a problem this year, is an important step to reduce problems next year. But we need to balance pest control with allowing habitat for beneficial insects and pollinators. So, how can that be done? 

For 2023, the National Garden Bureau’s shrub of the year is Spirea, which unfortunately often gets overlooked during the spring buying-rush as old-fashioned and uninteresting. In reality, spireas are tough, easy-to-grow shrubs and a workhorse in modern landscapes.

Spireas offer a wide range of colorful foliage ranging from blue to yellow, red to orange, and every shade of green in-between. A wide range of plant sizes and habits, as well as many flower colors, are additional reasons to reconsider these great shrubs.

All-America Selections (AAS) announces four national flower award winners this year. National awards are given to plants with consistently great performance across the United States. To see pictures of these and other great plants visit the All-America Selections.

Coleus ‘Coral Candy’ is a new release from PanAmerican Seed’s Premium Sun coleus series and the first seed-propagated coleus to become an AAS winner. The leaves are narrow and serrated, displaying multicolors of pink, burgundy and green.

An excellent way to attract butterflies to your garden is to plant annuals and perennials that are good nectar sources. Another irresistible attraction for butterflies is the butterfly bush, Buddleia davidii.

Maybe you have dreamed of creating a small wildflower garden in your landscape? If so, a great place to start is with an dryland prairie garden. Not too tall, but full of color and wildflowers! Just make sure the site you chose is in full sun- to perform at their best these plants require full sun at least 6 hours or more a day.

Importance of Pollinators
Pollination is the process in which plants reproduce. It involves the moving of pollen grains from the male part of the plant to the female part of the plant of the same species, and is required for germination and fertilization.

A butterfly garden can quickly become the main attraction of your landscape. These colorful gardens are cherished for the beautiful butterflies they attract. Besides the well-known monarch butterfly, there are over 150 different butterfly species that may be found in the Midwestern United States. An added bonus is that butterfly gardens also attract other nectar-feeding animals, like hummingbirds, honeybees, bumblebees, and moths.

Midsummer is the season of solitary wasps. These wasps are called solitary because they do not build large colonies like paper wasps or yellow jackets. They are predators and prey on spiders, crickets, cicadas and other insects. Solitary wasps paralyze their prey and drag it to a burrow. They lay an egg on the paralyzed prey, which hatches into a larva that feeds on the paralyzed insect. Solitary warps are not aggressive and would only sting someone who is foolish enough to handle the live wasp.

Late summer and fall can be a dreary time in the landscape, with little else but coreopsis and Black-eyed Susan blooming. So it's a good idea to plan, and plant, now for color in your fall gardens.

Asters are an excellent plant to add for additional fall color. Two species of aster, which are both improvements on native wildflowers, are New England Aster and New York Aster. Both aster species are native to the United States, although much of the breeding work to develop improved varieties has been done in England and Germany.

Conservation plantings of wildflowers and grasses may range in size from a few plants in a home garden, to extensive plantings on a farm or acreage. Usually these plantings are intended to create habitat for butterflies, pollinators, birds or other wildlife. But if the planting isn’t well-maintained, it’s benefits and beauty many decrease over time.