A slice of columnist Tom and Nancy Atwell’s garden in July in this archive photo. State Horticulturalist Gary Fish stopped by recently and liked what he saw. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
It is wonderful to have a real horticultural expert tour your garden, and it is even better when he actually likes your garden.
For the next-to-last program of my wife Nancy’s second six-year stint as president of the Cape Elizabeth Garden Club, she asked State Horticulturist Gary Fish to present a program on gardening to please pollinators.
He arrived early, and as we live just 300 yards or so from the library where the garden club meets, he stopped by our home first.
We were more than halfway through No-Mow May when he visited, and he approved of our back lawn, which has more native wild violets than grass. I wasn’t surprised he liked it because well before no-mow May existed, he’d told me that violets are the necessary host plant for fritillary butterflies, so I should encourage the violets (even after they stop blooming). I took his advice, except for the strawberry beds, where if I didn’t weed the violets out, they’d take over and I wouldn’t get any fruit.
Fish also liked that we have left a quarter of our half-acre property a woodland, just as it was when we had the house built in 1975. That area – mostly oak and maples trees – had some ledge and was never farmed. We’ve been adding native plants to the less ledgy part of the site, which Nancy calls re-wilding. It has trout lily, bloodroot and occasional jack-in-the-pulpit, all of which showed up on their own, and we’ve been adding wintergreen (gaultheria), a native ground cover.
Fish studied forestry in college, and he took note of the (invasive) Norway maples that abut our property. With their multiple-stemmed growth pattern, they are likely to be blown down in some future wind storm, he said. That wouldn’t bother us, since they wouldn’t fall on our house. Probably, if the trees ever do fall, though, we’d need to replant our yard, because it would become a great deal sunnier.
Fish also noticed that our high-bush blueberries are blooming prolifically this spring. I’d noticed the same earlier, and that bushes elsewhere in town likewise have more blooms than normal. I’m hoping it means a good crop.
Looking at our raspberry bed, he asked if we had problems with spotted-wing drosophila, an invasive pest that has caused problems for Maine’s commercial fruit growers. We’ve been OK so far. I’d heard in the past from David Handley, a small-fruit specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, that the pest largely dies off in Maine winters, and it takes until mid-August before building up enough population to do major damage. Luckily, most of our fruit ripens before then.
After our impromptu garden tour, we went to the library for Fish’s talk. I was pleased that Nancy and I are also doing most of the things needed to help pollinators. For one, we grow many native flowers – among them, asters, rudbeckia, asclepias, echinacea, lobelia and native geranium – whose blooms provide pollen and nectar throughout the season. We planted them because they are pretty, but it’s nice to know that they also provide food for various kinds of wildlife.
Secondly, we have some naked soil, in the vegetable garden and in some other spots around the yard, which some beneficial insects require.
What we could do better is to leave more stems standing in the fall. Apparently raspberry and asparagus stems, if left over the winter, provide nesting sites for bees. Normally, I remove those in the fall, because I’ve more time than in the spring. Last fall, I never got around to this chore, which turns out to be a good thing. This year, I won’t even think about cutting them back to the ground.
I might, however, trim the tops. The ideal height for stems to allow the bees to create nests is between 8 and 24 inches. Gary also recommended leaving some partially cut hollow stems standing, as well, as some pollinators nest in hollow stems.
We’re glad to know we are taking correct steps to help the environment, and we’re glad to learn to do better.
Tom Atwell is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth. He can be contacted at: tomatwell@me.com.
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