Thursday, October 3, 2019

Back to the Future - Retiring to Help Pollinators

In the last few years, my posts to this blog have been sparse because I've been very, very busy delivering many academic commitments. But as of 3 days ago, I retired from full-time scientific work to focus more on conservation - hurray!

Pete Ewins - in his garden. photo-CK
This fall I'm rejoining the board of the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale and Toronto, who supported several large pollinator projects I'll be blogging about in the coming months. I'm also collaborating with In the Zone Gardens, a joint project of WWF Canada and Carolinian Canada. ITZG is helping people plant pollinator and wildlife gardens. Today I'll be joining Pete Ewins of WWF Canada at my favorite organic farmers' market, Dufferin Grove, where I've done previous pollinator events.

At Dufferin Grove I'll be contributing several pollinator perennials and shrubs to Pete's free giveaway table. I'm highlighting some of them below.

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed - photo CK
One plant I may have trouble giving away is Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata. It's a great plant, but my seedlings are small plugs, which most people ignore. But experienced gardeners know that a plug plant put in the ground this fall will be a big, blooming fountain of flowers next summer. So I hope to give many of my 50 seedlings away today. I grew them from wild-collected seeds from three locations in Ontario and Québec, courtesy of the North American Native Plant Society Seed Exchange. This way gardeners will get wild plant vigor and a range of flower colors from pale pink to red.
Arrowwood Viburnum - F.A. Martin, CC By SA 4.0

I'll also have three good sized bushes - two Viburnums and one Ninebark.

Arrowwood Viburnum, Viburnum dentatum, is a big bush in the wild but smaller varieties have been selected for gardens, which is what I'm giving away. Like our other native viburnums, it has attractive
clusters of white flowers in spring for the pollinators, followed by blue berries in late summer and fall for the birds. Its leaves turn lovely shades of red in autumn. The leaves also feed a variety of caterpillars, including those of the Holly Blue butterfly and the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth.

Holly Blue butterfly - Charles J Sharp, CC BY SA 3.0


Hummingbird Clearwing Moth, Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0

Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), is a shrub much used by landscapers for its good foliage and growth form. As I pointed out in my article "Soil Spectrum", in Ground, the journal of Landscape Ontario, Ninebark is one of the native plants which gets it roots extremely deep in the soil, so after the first year it never needs watering and in fact brings up nutrients from subsoil layers to the topsoil. With abundant white flowers in spring and various native moth caterpillars living on the leaves (to feed the baby birds!), its a perfect backdrop to a pollinator garden.
Ninebark, by Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0

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