If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~

Don't

Phlox pilosa dominates and there are other plants for pollinators

Bees and other pollinators need a variety of nectar and pollen producing plants in a garden from early spring to late into the fall.

Phlox pilosa, Senecio aureus and Dodecatheon meadia

The Garden Of Benign Neglect's very own Practically Perfect Pink Phlox pilosa might look like a pink monoculture each spring. It isn't, but, it verged on one during my first gardening years. Now early blooming sedges, penstemons, baptisia, native iris, columbines, Golden Ragwort and spring ephemerals attract pollinating visitors to the garden for the entire growing season.

Keeping the Sunny Susans Bed from becoming a monoculture has been a challenge. Rudbeckia hirta and R fulgida can quickly fill the shallow, clay soil bed with their golden gorgeousness. They spread by root and seed, crowding out the less assertive perennials on their path to total garden domination.

Green Time in the garden

I feel like the adoring mother of the delightful, unruly child, who's running amok at the party. "He did what! Isn't he adorable! I exclaim as I notice that several salvia have been overrun. I love them anyway. Each summer, I wait patiently through the Green Time (mid summer when all is green) for them to bloom and then dance and shout with joy when they finally open their golden petals to the day.

Emerald Wavy Lined Moth cat disguised as a petal

They never fail to attract bees, wasps, flies, bee imitators, butterflies and moths (and their caterpillars) to the garden; they bloom forever; and, they continue to make me smile. But,

I want the garden to be more than a golden sea of Black Eyed Susans. I want it to be a haven for wildlife. So, each spring I edit and weed. Letting the Susans remain growing where nothing else can grow. Over the limestone bedrock that hides a few inches below the soil...Tucking plants that need deeper soil here and there between the Susans. Plants that will survive, plants that support wildlife and plants that make me smile.

Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)

Like the Great Blue Lobelia which bloomed all of August. It arrived in a container of Asclepias syriaca. What a happy accident. Now I need more.

'Summer Sorbet' caryopteris

Or, Caryopteris x clandonensis 'Summer Sorbet'. It was an impulse buy....No where was it on my list of must have pollinator plants! I found it on the sale table for a few dollars a plant and six plants came home with me! Enough plants to make an impact. It was an immediate hit with the skippers, butterflies, hover flies and Bumbles. Just what was wanted!

Or, Gaura lindheimeri 'Passionate Rainbow'; with its wands of delicate flowers.

Or, the dozens of other plants that will provide for visiting pollinators from early spring to late fall.

In my garden that means from February through late November.

Collinsia verna, a native winter annual

I am so glad I don't have to choose just one plant!

xxoogail

This post is part of a series on native pollinators in the garden

Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
Pollinators Come In all Shapes and Sizes (here)

Other posts on pollinators:
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)
A Splendid Creature For Your Garden (here)


This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.