Raise your hand if you want to help butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. Good for you.
In my last blog post, I discussed two ways to help pollinators starting in the fall. Waiting to cut back perennials until spring and letting some leaves lie protects overwintering insects.
But there is so much more you can do to help this fall and year-round. It’s all about creating habitat, providing safe spaces for pollinators to live, eat, shelter and raise young.
My neighbors raised their eyebrows when I plunked a moss-covered log into my landscape. But it looks terrific in my woodland garden, a natural accent that provides shelter and food for wildlife.
Logs are attractive habitats for wildlife, including pollinators. Photo: Annette Cormany
So, adopt a log. Spiders and beetles are attracted to the moist areas under logs and peeling bark. Bees and butterflies nest and overwinter in drier parts of logs.
Logs help other wildlife, too. Chipmunks use them as highways, toads love their moisture, and other critters use them for sunbathing.
Lay logs horizontally, burying one end a few inches to maintain some moisture. And be sure to ask permission before tossing that log into your pickup. Mine came from a family property. Honest.
Dead-standing trees called “snags” also provide habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. As long as a tree poses no danger to you or your home, consider leaving it. What looks messy to us is beautiful to wildlife.
Beetles and other insects burrow through dead wood, creating tunnels that cavity-nesting bees such as mason bees lay their eggs in. Other insects tuck under bark. I once saw a striking mourning cloak butterfly emerge from the bark of a dead tree.
If leaving a whole dead tree is too much for your sense of order or safety is an issue, fell the tree but leave the log in part or whole. Or leave just the stump. Hardwood logs with the bark attached add more varied, longer-lasting habitat.
Stumps offer food and shelter to insects. Photo: Annette Cormany
What else can you do to enhance your habitat for pollinators beyond planting native plants that flower from spring to frost? Plenty.
Add a rock pile or wall. Bumblebees, leafcutter bees, and wasps nest in their cavities. Ground beetles and many other insects shelter where soil meets stone.
Stone walls – including this handsome one dressed in lichen – provide shelter and nesting sites for wildlife. Photo: Annette Cormany
Use different sizes and types of rocks and skip the mortar to create more protected nooks and crannies. Planting native plants nearby makes the area even more attractive to pollinators and other beneficial insects.
Thanks for all you are already doing to help support and protect pollinators. It matters.
By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.
When we talk about pollinators and how to help them, we have often focused on what plants can support them, who the pollinators are and some traits of their natural histories, or how to create habitat for them. However, besides individual actions that people can take to help them, other options that are very impactful also exist. In today’s post, I want to present one that involves a combination of community and institutional collaboration: the Bee City and Bee Campus USA certification.
What are Bee City and Bee Campus USA?
The certifications called Bee City and Bee Campus USA are labels that cities and campuses, respectively, can receive from the Xerces Society if they commit and act to protect pollinators and their habitats.
For those who have never heard of it, the Xerces Society is an organization interested in the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. Over the years, it has not only become recognized as an important conservation organization but also has developed impactful and meaningful ways to support research on the topic and engage the population and institutions (and many other stakeholders!) in conservation actions that are within their reach. The Bee City and Bee Campus certification is one of those initiatives.
How does it work?
Once cities and campuses decide to receive the certification, they need to submit an application and pay an annual fee. By doing this, they commit to taking specific actions that will lead to the conservation of the thousands of species of bees and other pollinators that exist in the USA, as well as their habitats. The certification is revised every year, and if the institution or city is not performing following the set standards, the certification is not renewed. Today, many institutions and cities across the USA have joined the initiative and are actively following their commitments. If you are interested in knowing if your community is a part of the initiative, an online database exists where it is very easy to search for participating members using addresses or names.
The Bee City and Bee Campus USA website has a neat tool to search for current members across the USA.
The commitments that institutions and cities make when they join the initiative involve the establishment and promotion of specific actions. These actions combine institutional and community involvement, which requires the creation of an active committee that will be responsible for running programs that will help the institution reach its goals. Once this committee is created, the group is responsible for proposing and running actions within the reach of the institution. The actions need to be oriented towards promoting the protection of pollinators and their habitats through what can be generally categorized under education, direct action, community involvement, and potential revision of standard operating procedures or policies.
The Xerces Society doesn’t just provide a certification. In fact, it has over the years produced a massive number of tools that help cities or institutions understand how to run the programs. Regular webinars are organized, fact sheets distributed, general manuals and other documentation shared, and a network of participating cities established, allowing for a “hive mind” to develop.
What can some of these actions be?
Education programs involve the distribution of information among the population (for cities) or members of the campus (for campuses). This information can take many different forms but generally educates about the diversity of pollinators, the importance of promoting habitat, the key contributions of pollinators to the well-being of the community and the environment, ways to protect them through individual or joint actions, creating information guides and fact sheets, and more.
Direct actions often require involvement of the institution in establishing habitat for pollinators, distributing resources that will allow the community to protect pollinators (e.g., distributing plants, seeds, other habitat resources), actively reducing the use of pesticides, etc.
Community involvement is promoted by any program that the institution could build to allow its members to come together and engage in projects larger than any individual would be able to take on by themselves. There are many ways this can be done, but some examples are the creation of student-faculty groups that could run research projects that can then be used to inform policies and conservation actions. Others could be the establishment and promotion of institution-wide actions, such as the promotion of months with no or reduced mowing (e.g., “No-Mow Month” initiatives), the running of citizen science projects (e.g., through iNaturalist), establishing days centered around the celebration and recognition of pollinators and their services to humans and the environment (e.g., coordinating Pollinator Week activities), and others.
Finally, one of the unique reaches of this initiative is its ability to promote changes of policies and procedures regularly used by the institution/city. Under this program, the committee should propose and the city or campus implement at least some adjustments in the way the institution in question is run. For example, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plans should be created and used if they are not already in practice, Code can be adjusted to facilitate the planting of native plants, monetary or other incentives can be offered for the creation of pollinator habitat, and more.
I would like to have my city/campus join; what do I do?
If you’re interested in having your campus or city join the initiative, first go to the Bee City/Campus website and check out the requirements and some of the how-to webinars. Along with this, for cities, you may want to get in touch with representatives and present this as a request. If you’re on a campus, get a diverse group of members together and propose this to leadership. If you still feel overwhelmed by this and feel you still have a lot of questions, reach out to Bee Cities or Bee Campuses in your area and ask them for help! They will be more than happy to explain what their path was and how they came to be, so you can also become part of the national initiative.
By Anahí Espíndola, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. See more posts by Anahí.
Anahí also writes an Extension Blog in Spanish! Check it out here, extensionesp.umd.edu, and please share and spread the word to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues in Maryland. ¡Bienvenidos a Extensión en Español!
Did you know that how and when you cut back your perennials and tidy your landscape matters to pollinators?
I just read a fact sheet from the Xerces Society that opened my eyes to more ways to help pollinators year-round, especially in the fall.
I already make sure I have something blooming from April to frost, so pollen and nectar are always available. And I emphasize native plants that coevolved with pollinators to support them best.
But beyond flowers, there are many things we can do to provide shelter for nesting and overwintering pollinators. And we can start some of them in the fall.
Pollinators and other insects shelter in stems and branches of trees, shrubs, and flowers. They also shelter in leaf litter, undisturbed or bare ground, dead wood, brush piles, and rock piles.
Incorporating these features in your landscape – rather than cleaning them away – supports bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
So how can you make your garden more welcoming to pollinators this fall?
Start with the stems. Don’t cut back your perennials until late spring. Bees and other pollinators hibernate in the stems in winter. Only remove unhealthy plant stems to manage disease.
But doesn’t that look a little unkempt? Yes, but messy is beautiful – and necessary for pollinators to survive and thrive.
Master Gardener sign explaining why a messy garden is good for pollinators. Source: A. Cormany
The Master Gardeners and I believe this so strongly that signs in our teaching gardens say, “Excuse our mess, pollinators at rest,” to explain why we don’t cut back plants in the fall.
Next, leave some leaves. Most butterflies and moths use leaf litter to protect eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, or adults over the winter.
Wooly bear caterpillars tuck into leaf piles. Luna moths wrap their cocoons in leaves. Some butterflies lay eggs on fallen leaves. Queen bumble bees burrow into soil under leaves.
A luna moth cocoon wrapped in leaves to wait out the winter. Photo: M. Raupp
So pile some leaves around trees, shrubs, and perennials as a natural mulch. They will suppress weeds, hold moisture, and feed the soil. I chip some leaves but leave some whole.
I often use leaf mulch in my vegetable garden, too. And when I had a larger landscape, I kept a 3-foot border of leaves against a stone wall to provide more shelter.
Leaves aren’t litter: they’re habitat. Ideally, some leaves will become a permanent part of your landscape. Pick a corner, an edge, or a garden. I let leaves lie in a small woodland garden.
But if you need to remove some of the leaves, try to leave them in place until mid-spring to give overwintering pollinators a chance to emerge.
This is really a glimpse of the many ways you can invite and support pollinators year-round. Learn more about Pollinator Gardens on the Home and Garden Information Center website.
Thanks for all you are doing to protect pollinators. It matters.
By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.
With spring coming up, many of us are already starting to get our yards and gardens ready for the growing season. Among the activities we may take on, there can be the managing of branches, sticks, and wood that may have been trimmed from trees and shrubs in the fall, over the winter, or just recently. In today’s post, I want to talk about how to integrate these resources into our green spaces, to support wildlife and the natural services they provide.
Wood and stick piles can provide welcoming habitat to beneficial organisms. Photo: A. Espíndola
Increasing the diversity of our green spaces
In several of the posts that we publish on this blog, we recommend different actions that can be taken to increase biodiversity in our green spaces (see local ecotype plants, helping pollinators in small green spaces, and conserving parasitoids for some ideas). We know that increasing biodiversity improves the ability to control and restrain pests, increases wild and crop plant pollination, and in many cases leads to better soil quality. Among these practices, there is one that increases the physical complexity of our green spaces, providing nesting, shelter, and food resources to beneficial organisms. The practice I’m talking about consists of building wood and stick piles that can be established in our green spaces. The idea behind this practice is to create a space where birds, small mammals, insects, and even pest predators can find their preferred resources, and thus be attracted and present in our environments (learn more about the landscaping rationale for using dead wood).
What organisms are attracted by these piles?
Depending on the size of the pile and its composition (e.g., large logs, smaller sticks, a mix of them), different organisms will be attracted and may establish themselves in our green spaces. The presence of a mix of logs and sticks usually attracts birds, which may nest within the pile or may just spend time within the pile searching for food or finding shelter at different points during the day. These birds will certainly contribute to increasing the diversity of animals present in our green spaces and can also in some cases participate in the control of insect pests that we may not want in our gardens and yards.
Carolina wrens are very attracted to shrubby habitats, meaning that piles of wood and brush represent a great way to provide resources to these little cute birds who in turn can help us keep herbivore populations in line. Photo: Shenandoah NP.
Other animals we can observe in these piles are a variety of insects then may be associated with the decomposition of wood or that may use wood as a nesting or overwintering resource (e.g., bees, solitary wasps). While the former can help recycle the wood material and reintegrate it into the habitat, the latter may participate in the pollination of plants and crops that we may grow in that area or predate on unwanted pests.
Similarly, ground-dwelling invertebrates like millipedes and ground beetles can also find shelter under these piles, while the brush can also contribute to the nesting of pollinators such as (ground-nesting) bees, the overwintering of some butterflies and moths, and help improve the quality of the soil in that part of our yard.
Larger organisms may also be attracted to these piles, such as small mammals, amphibians, and even reptiles. Although we may tend to dislike these groups of animals, many of them feed on unwanted soil organisms and may help with soil quality, while others can actually control vermin through their predatory abilities. This is particularly the case of snakes that may find shelter in these spaces, which, while harmless to humans (the vast majority of snakes in Maryland are non-venomous, readily feed on rats and mice that may be present around the house.
A mix of thick and thin pieces of wood can provide a diverse habitat to many different organisms. Photo: A. Espíndola.
How to build these piles?
These piles can take many different shapes and sizes, which depend in part on the materials and space available. When very large spaces are available (e.g., in the woods), it is recommended for these piles to be relatively large – at least 10 to 20 feet in length, and up to 8 feet in height (read more about these larger brush piles). In smaller spaces such as in urban or suburban gardens, these piles can be much smaller, occupying areas that may not be regularly used for other purposes. In all cases, it is ideal to build these piles using a combination of different types of materials, such as twigs and branches of different thicknesses, some logs, and even some branches that may still have dead leaves attached to them…always using healthy materials.
An important consideration when putting together these piles is that they should not be built leaning on or very close to wood-based structures or the foundations of our buildings. This is because of the potential risk of termite infestations of buildings if the piles are not physically separated from them. However, it is important to stress that establishing these piles has not been shown to be associated with higher termite infestations if the pile is not in contact or very close to the built structure. (You can read a very good discussion about mulch and termites from Iowa State Extension).
So, as you work on your spring garden, I encourage you to think about plant stems, logs, and branches not as waste that needs to be cleaned up, but as beneficial resources that you can incorporate into your available space.
By Anahí Espíndola, Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. See more posts by Anahí.
Anahí also writes an Extension Blog in Spanish! Check it out here, extensionesp.umd.edu, and please share and spread the word to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues in Maryland. ¡Bienvenidos a Extensión en Español!
