Make Your Yard a Home

The Sycamore Greenway is home to a huge assortment of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators along its 2-mile stretch trail lined with blooming native flowers throughout spring, summer, and fall. But you don’t have to go to the Greenway to see pollinators.

Are you making plans for your summer garden? Vegetables to plant, annuals to fill decorative pots? Why not commit to buying and planting one new species of native plant to help out our pollinator neighbors?

Maybe a Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), or the slightly less gaudy Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida)? Both are attractive to humans and bees alike, and are tough. Or perhaps a Gray-headed Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata, my personal favorite), always crawling with a variety of bees collecting pollen from the tiny brown disc florets that cover the rounded head of the flower. All three can generally be found in garden centers, or ordered online from a variety of sources specializing in native plants (be sure to look for “plain” natives; fancy named cultivars may not be as attractive to pollinators).

Another favorite is Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), a little more refined than its common cousin though just as tempting to Monarch butterflies and other insects that utilize milkweed as a host. Or the slightly more compact Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), similarly appealing but with distinctive orange flowers instead of pink.

I have all of the aforementioned plants in my backyard garden (my E. pupurea, unfortunately, is a white-petaled cultivar purchased when my enthusiasm for planting native flowers exceeded my understanding of how they function in an ecosystem), a small oasis surrounded by turfgrass in my little subdivision. I can attest to their attraction to a fascinating variety of insect life, and they bring (perhaps too many!) hours of pleasure surveying my miniature domain and all the tiny dramas that abound.

The great thing about prairie plants is that they are adapted to live in our hot, humid summers and thus don’t require a lot of attention. Bees and other insects evolved to live alongside these plants. As I plan my garden for the summer, I will be looking for one or two new inhabitants to move in; observations along the Greenway are a great resource to discover which flowers I find are attractive, and which are most attractive to the bees (they are not always the same). Wild Quinine, Stiff Goldenrod, and Black-eyed Susan are all in the running. But how to choose? Surely I can find space to squeeze in three more plants!

It just take one to get started. If you have a square foot or so to spare in your yard, consider filling it with a new native flower to add resilient beauty and create habitat for pollinators on your property.

Originally published on Sycamore Greenway Friends.