GROBigRed - Gardening: Pollinator Blooms for All Seasons

Kelly Feehan & Mary Jane Frogge Author

10/11/2024 Added

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Pollinator Gardening: Pollinator Blooms for All Seasons

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[00:00:00.000]Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. I'm going to start off with talking
[00:00:19.920]about spring and early summer plants. First, I do want to mention the Nebraska Pollinator Habitat
[00:00:32.160]Certification Program. We started this about five years ago. And it's to encourage people to plant
[00:00:41.360]pollinator habitats. And the list of plants that I'm going to be talking about come from this
[00:00:49.760]list. So even if you decide not to certify, it's got a great plant list for you to look at. So I
[00:00:56.800]hope you take some time to look at that site. I want to remind you that it's important to plant
[00:01:03.280]through the whole growing season, March through October. And when you're planting, it helps if
[00:01:11.920]you plant in groups of five or seven or more. Or do a mass planting. It just kind of depends on your
[00:01:19.600]location and what you have available. But by planting in groups, we found that that really
[00:01:25.920]helps our pollinators. So I'm going to start off with bulbs. We've found that spring is sometimes
[00:01:35.600]hard to find plants that bloom in the spring for us to put in our habitats. So I really wanted
[00:01:42.240]to focus on spring flowering bulbs because they're one of our earliest flowers. And
[00:01:49.440]they are great for pollinators, especially the ones that are out early. So one of the earliest
[00:01:55.200]pollinator plants, snowdrops, and they are blooming, you know, one of the first that you
[00:02:03.480]see. So as soon as the snow melts, you're seeing snowdrops. So February, March is when they're
[00:02:08.660]blooming. They are not native to the U.S. They're from Europe, but so is the European honeybee. So
[00:02:19.280]the honeybees are out foraging. They're looking for plants. So snowdrops are there. And this is
[00:02:27.160]one of my favorite flowers. So I have a lot in my landscape. And I love watching the honeybees early
[00:02:34.360]in the spring visit them. So this one is one that is great for mass planting. And it's just -- it
[00:02:41.160]lets you know spring is on the way. So that's why it's one of my favorites. Another early
[00:02:49.120]spring is crocus. There are a lot of different colors for crocus, purple, yellow, white, stripes.
[00:02:58.960]And they're, again, another one that is great for mass plantings. So it's great for our early bees.
[00:03:08.880]Honeybees do visit them. And they're just a really nice ground cover. And great color early in the spring
[00:03:18.960]when we're waiting for our other plants to bloom. So Acrocus is another one that would be great
[00:03:25.200]as a mass planting and early in the spring.
[00:03:28.560]Siberian Squill or Scilla, a lot of times you hear it called that,
[00:03:40.640]is one that is also early, March and April. It's a little taller plant, 4 to 16
[00:03:48.800]inches, 4 to 6 inches. It's also European, but again the honeybees do visit
[00:03:57.600]it. I just love the color of this plant, just beautiful blue flowers early in the spring,
[00:04:05.440]great for mass plantings. There's a couple properties around Lincoln where it's almost
[00:04:12.080]like a lawn. It's so much of the Siberian Squill. You just look forward to seeing that bloom in
[00:04:18.640]the spring each year. It can handle full sun or part shade. It's just one of our prettiest bulbs
[00:04:27.440]that you can have. The color is very unique. You don't see many other bulbs with that bright blue
[00:04:34.880]color. Gloria the Snow, another just beautiful little bulb. What's nice with this one is pink,
[00:04:47.680]white, and blue.
[00:04:48.480]And very well adapted for Nebraska. It's three to six inches tall and blooms March through April.
[00:05:00.800]And one thing that is nice to know is that it can tolerate being around
[00:05:06.960]black walnut. So you can, if you have black walnut trees, it can be under or near them.
[00:05:11.280]So that's an added bonus. But beautiful little flowers. It does, and with
[00:05:18.320]most bulbs, they do multiply. I wouldn't say that any of that I've mentioned are aggressive
[00:05:24.880]in any way, but they do multiply. And if you want to, you know, dig some up in the fall and
[00:05:32.080]move them to other locations, you can do that real easily with these little bulbs.
[00:05:36.320]Striped Squill, another one of my favorites. I think the flowers are just fascinating with
[00:05:48.160]with the white and the blue stripes. This one's a little taller, six to eight inches,
[00:05:53.440]and does well in full sun. And this is one where I've seen butterflies visit.
[00:06:02.640]We have a couple butterflies that overwinter as adults. These butterflies will find places to
[00:06:10.720]crevices, maybe under bark, sometimes in firewood that is stacked outside.
[00:06:18.240]And so they're out fairly early if it's warm. So they are looking for
[00:06:24.880]plants to forage on. So I caught this red admiral visiting my
[00:06:33.680]striped squill a few years ago. So, you know, it really is beneficial to have these
[00:06:41.600]early blooming bulbs in your landscape. And plus they're just so pretty. So this one
[00:06:47.840]is a fun one to have with because it's just a unique flower that's really different from anything else.
[00:06:52.800]Grape hyacinth, muscari, another very attractive bulb, unique flower,
[00:07:03.040]comes in blue and white and then there's even one that's two shades of blue.
[00:07:10.320]Really nice for mass planting and about six to eight inches tall, starts blooming
[00:07:17.680]in April and can handle sun or part shade. The flower looks like
[00:07:25.760]a little clump of grapes together, so it's a unique flower and very pretty.
[00:07:33.520]Moving to one of our earlier blooming perennials, past flower. This one is not
[00:07:47.520]native to the United States, but it is found throughout Nebraska. It has adapted very well,
[00:07:53.600]blooms early March and April, six to ten inches tall, and just beautiful flowers and beautiful
[00:08:01.520]foliage. It's just very ferny and soft and just very attractive even after it's done blooming.
[00:08:08.320]So this one really looks nice in groupings or in clumps, and it's a nice little plant that has a
[00:08:17.360]nice mound effect. So really nice, very early perennial. Trees definitely are very beneficial
[00:08:31.920]to pollinators. Our eastern redbud, which is native to North America, is one of our early blooming
[00:08:39.920]flowers, flowering trees. And at least in Lincoln, they were just gorgeous this spring. I hope they
[00:08:47.200]were as beautiful in surrounding communities in Omaha as well. But it was just a beautiful,
[00:08:54.480]perfect year for them. Beautiful pink. And there is also a white tree also.
[00:09:04.160]They're a little harder to find. But eastern redbud is one that will seed itself. So if you have
[00:09:12.080]room for more trees, you can transplant the seedlings.
[00:09:18.000]I know I've done that a few times. One of my favorite trees just because of, again, early
[00:09:24.400]blooming. You know, you're just coming out of winter and you're just ready to see some color.
[00:09:30.000]So this one does well in full sun but also part shade. Can handle being, you know, kind of partial
[00:09:37.600]understory tree. And only gets 20 to 30 feet tall. And has a longer bloom period. It's several weeks.
[00:09:46.880]April through May. I've seen it. Word to advertise is deer tolerant. But we've had three small ones
[00:09:56.800]that we put in our Cherry Creek habitat that is behind our Lancaster County Extension Office.
[00:10:02.560]And the deer have, they've unfortunately damaged the trees a bit. They've chewed on the young
[00:10:09.440]branches. So I think if there's not much else to eat, they will chew on them. So I did
[00:10:16.720]want to mention that because I have seen it listed as deer tolerance.
[00:10:20.320]This is one of my favorite flowers because it's just a bright, almost, you know, bright sunshine
[00:10:30.000]yellow. The prairie ragwort. It is a native to Nebraska. Probably won't find it in the,
[00:10:38.400]in the garden centers. Possibly. But you probably have to order seed. Or if you happen to
[00:10:46.560]have someone who has it that, you know, is willing to share. But this is a true wildflower.
[00:10:53.360]And just, just beautiful. And of course the early bees love it. And it's this bright yellow,
[00:11:02.960]bright yellow flowers. It's a smaller plant. Only six to twelve inches.
[00:11:07.840]But a lot of times you'll see it in, in the ditch
[00:11:16.400]and it's still growing. I think it's in some of the seed mixes
[00:11:19.920]that, that the state has planted. And so it's, it's one to look for
[00:11:24.560]this month. It should be blooming now. So you should be, be able to see it if you're out,
[00:11:32.720]you know, in a more rural area. But you should be able to find it in some seed mixes and
[00:11:39.200]those catalogs that carry native wildflowers. So if you can find this one, give it a try.
[00:11:46.240]This is a shrub New Jersey tea. It's a fragrant and has, you know, very unique, pretty white flowers.
[00:11:58.480]It can handle some part shade, full sun. This is native, so eastern to central United States.
[00:12:05.920]A smaller shrub, three to four feet, and it blooms May through June. But just a
[00:12:16.080]really nice attractive plant. I like this as a landscape plant too because it can handle some
[00:12:22.480]shade. A lot of times I get calls from people that are looking for shrubs that will help
[00:12:28.880]pollinators but need some, be able to tolerate some shade. So this one is a nice one
[00:12:34.480]for that. And it's native, so that is a bonus too. So this might be one to consider.
[00:12:45.920]Comfrey is an herb. It has really unique beautiful flowers, white to pink to purple.
[00:12:54.320]And bumblebees, from what I found, really love this plant. It will spread
[00:13:03.680]and kind of naturalize itself. And it's drought tolerant, so that is nice.
[00:13:10.080]It can handle some part shade, full sun, gets one to two feet tall. So
[00:13:15.760]it's a bigger plant. I've seen some blooming now. But I just love the color of it
[00:13:22.800]and how the flowers kind of change as they mature. But really nice for bumblebees, larger bees,
[00:13:32.800]and great for, you know, May-June blooming. Baptisia, another one of my favorites.
[00:13:45.600]And a favorite of bumblebees. A few years ago, I was down in Nebraska City visiting in May,
[00:13:53.680]and they found a big planting of Baptisia. And the bumblebees were just all over it. I had such
[00:14:06.400]a great time taking pictures because it was amazing. You know, the queens were out foraging
[00:14:15.440]and they just love this plant. So if you like bumblebees, this is a definite one you should have.
[00:14:21.520]Found throughout Nebraska. It's native, can handle the full sun. It's a big plant, three to four feet,
[00:14:30.400]so you need to give this plant some room. If you can plant multiple plants, you know, I'd recommend
[00:14:36.080]it because it's just gorgeous. I love this plant. May through June. And it's one that, you know,
[00:14:45.280]once it's established, you know, try not, try and put it where it needs to be and so you don't have
[00:14:49.840]to move it. It's a bit hard to move, you know, if you've got this, you know, purchasing small plants,
[00:14:54.560]you shouldn't have a problem. But definitely one to try because it, and just beautiful flowers,
[00:15:00.640]you know, they're related to the pea family and so that that's how
[00:15:08.320]the flowers look. And they're just gorgeous colors. So I hope this is one that can end up
[00:15:15.120]in your landscape because this one is just beautiful. Wild plum, and this one's definitely
[00:15:24.000]native to North America, and early blooming small, small tree. And if you have, you know, acreage or
[00:15:35.840]a farm, this one is is great for, for our native pollinators, for bees,
[00:15:45.680]we have some that are kind of down from our habitat, and very fragrant. They're, they're
[00:15:53.760]wonderful in the spring, and I love to walk down to, to see them and see what bees are visiting.
[00:15:59.600]But if you have room for wild plums, they do, obviously do very well. And you also could
[00:16:07.840]have edible fruits, you know, if you like wild plums to, to eat, or you've got wildlife that visit your
[00:16:14.800]habitat, you know, this is just a, a great plant to have. It does sucker and it, you can get little
[00:16:24.400]clumps that can grow into larger clumps of, of wild plums. So it, you know, give it some room
[00:16:32.720]so it can do that. But it's just a gorgeous plant to,
[00:16:37.760]to have early blooming and then great for pollinators. And then you get the
[00:16:44.640]fruit as a bonus. Another great plant is a purple poppy mallow. It, it blooms,
[00:16:56.480]starts in May, but it blooms throughout the summer. So it's, it's great because of that,
[00:17:04.400]because it's a long blooming. Very beautiful dark pink flowers, very unique color.
[00:17:14.480]And great ground cover. It takes a little while to get established. You have to be a little patient
[00:17:19.520]with this one. But once it does, it's, it's tough. It can handle drought. It can handle traffic.
[00:17:27.040]It can handle other plants growing around it. It will, it will, once it's established,
[00:17:33.520]it should always be there. Likes full sun.
[00:17:36.640]It will spread, but it's, I wouldn't call it aggressive. It's, it's, it's just a really nice
[00:17:44.320]native plant that has just a great flower color. I think that's, and you'll notice that when it's
[00:17:52.080]blooming, you know, it'll really pop out. And so that, that is, I think, an added bonus when
[00:17:57.760]you've got, you know, something that's more unique of a color.
[00:18:01.440]Another native tree to North America that pollinators love is the American linden. It's a beautiful
[00:18:14.160]tree that gets 50 to 80 feet tall, blooms in June, and I would say that the flowers
[00:18:24.480]really aren't noticeable, but what you do notice is the scent, because it has a very sweet
[00:18:30.320]scent, but the flowers really aren't that showy. One drawback is the Japanese beetles
[00:18:36.960]really like lindens, and so if you have Japanese beetles in your community,
[00:18:44.320]maybe linden wouldn't be your first choice of trees to plant, but if you have an acreage,
[00:18:52.720]I'd still try and get one out, because the bees love it. The bumblebees,
[00:19:01.200]all bees really like this plant, and it is a native tree, so it's one to consider.
[00:19:09.360]Penstemons. There
[00:19:13.840]are several different types of native penstemons. I just picked one to talk about tonight, but
[00:19:20.160]all of them are wonderful, wonderful plants. I picked the shell leaf. I love the leaves on it.
[00:19:29.280]I think they're really unique, and then the flowers are just very big and bold. So this is
[00:19:35.680]one of my favorites, and it's a taller one, two to three feet, native to the central U.S.
[00:19:43.680]It can handle full sun, and just this light beautiful lavender color that it has.
[00:19:49.920]So if you can add pensamens, I really suggest that because they're just
[00:19:55.040]gorgeous flowers. They're very unique, and bumblebees, again, really like them. But there's
[00:20:05.840]many to pick from, so definitely look at the list and check out and see what else there is for
[00:20:13.520]pensamens. But they're just a beautiful, unique flower. And that's my list for spring and early
[00:20:25.200]summer. So thank you for going through my list with me. And I can't wait to see Kelly's list.
[00:20:32.960]She's going to do summer and fall. So thank you, everyone. I'll stop sharing there.
[00:20:43.360]Okay, I'm going to share my screen here in a minute. So this would be a great time for
[00:20:47.840]everybody to stand up, stretch, maybe do a couple jumping jacks, and I'll be ready in a in a jiff.
[00:20:54.480]Okay, are you seeing my screen? The correct mode?
[00:21:07.040]No, we are not.
[00:21:11.040]That's weird.
[00:21:13.200]Okay, here we go. I missed one step.
[00:21:19.360]There we go.
[00:21:20.960]Are you seeing it in presentation mode?
[00:21:25.840]Yes, yes.
[00:21:27.600]No notes, right?
[00:21:30.880]No notes, you're good to go.
[00:21:32.800]Because I can't see, I can see what I can see, but not what you guys can see. So okay,
[00:21:37.280]well thank you Mary Jane, that was a good cover of plants. There's not as many early spring through
[00:21:43.040]June blooming plants. So I'm doing the July to October, some of them might be mid-June,
[00:21:48.880]but mostly July to October. And there's numerous, numerous plants to select from
[00:21:54.720]during that time period. So I'm going to dive right in and get started. I do want to point
[00:22:01.440]out these publications, these are neb guides printed for Nebraska. So those of you that are
[00:22:06.560]not in Nebraska, Iowa, they should be fine. But in particular is the butterfly gardening neb
[00:22:12.880]guide. We have one on wildflowers for the home landscape, for perennials for sunny sites.
[00:22:17.920]We had a question ahead of time about drought tolerant plants. So these perennials and water
[00:22:25.680]wise landscapes, many of them would be considered very drought tolerant. And we also have a neb guide
[00:22:32.640]on annuals for Nebraska landscape. So in all of these, this is the one from plants to attract
[00:22:37.920]butterflies, which of course will in a nutshell attract almost all of the pollinators or a
[00:22:42.720]good number of them. Then you can see how they list them out alphabetically, scientific names,
[00:22:48.880]some varieties. This was published in 2012, so there's a lot of newer varieties that are
[00:22:54.320]available now. But many of these are excellent, excellent ones to try. Bloom color height,
[00:23:01.440]so you can see there's good, it tells if it's a larval source.
[00:23:04.720]So we want to make sure we're planning for the larva as well as the adult and or nectar source.
[00:23:12.560]So and those can be found at extensionpubs.unl.edu and just type in one of those names I shared there,
[00:23:20.160]butterfly gardening, wildflowers, perennials, and you'll be able to access these.
[00:23:24.400]Okay for the summer bloomers, keep in mind you know there's annuals, herbs, I'm going to cover
[00:23:31.360]a couple of shrubs. There's not a lot of summer blooming shrubs, most of them are spring blooming,
[00:23:35.680]but I'll cover a couple. And then some of our popular perennials for pollinators. Annuals,
[00:23:42.400]get a little bit of a bum name. They attract a lot of pollinators, maybe a few more butterflies
[00:23:49.040]than bees or other pollinators, but there's some excellent ones for those insects as well.
[00:23:54.800]What I like about annuals is you can kind of, if you have a bare spot here and there,
[00:23:59.120]a perennial that's died back or maybe you had to divide it, now you have some bare space.
[00:24:03.440]Annuals are great for tucking in long season of bloom and of course they're
[00:24:08.000]great for growing in containers. And I took this picture in the hay market
[00:24:12.240]in Lincoln and I'm sure that butterfly was very appreciative of the nectar
[00:24:17.120]that it was able to get in that downtown area with all that cement.
[00:24:21.120]So of the annuals, annuals like I said, they're kind of viewed as being better for butterflies
[00:24:28.960]in many cases, which is great and fine, and maybe not as good for some of the other pollinators,
[00:24:35.280]but the ones I have listed here are great for those as well. And there's so many to cover,
[00:24:42.080]so our job is to provide research-based or science-based information. So University of
[00:24:49.200]Minnesota did a four-year study a few years ago, and what I'm going to focus on, and with limited
[00:24:54.800]amount of time tonight, is they came up with nine annual flowers that they found to be
[00:24:59.360]the most attractive to pollinators of the more than 30 varieties. So not just attractive,
[00:25:05.280]but attractive to pollinators. I didn't say much about herbs. Herbs are great to include
[00:25:11.920]in gardens, pollinator gardens. Now, like basil, oregano, rosemary that we're growing
[00:25:17.600]usually for the leaves. We typically tell people don't let them bloom because you start
[00:25:22.640]lowering the quality of the flavor and the taste.
[00:25:27.120]So if your main goal is culinary, keep that in mind. But if your main goal is pollinators,
[00:25:32.520]plant them in the garden and let them bloom and they'll do a great job.
[00:25:36.200]So again, most of these annuals that I'm covering were the ones that the University
[00:25:45.000]of Minnesota found to do well. But salvias are great pollinator plants. In the Minnesota trial,
[00:25:52.200]this pink jewel, which was an all-American selection in 2012, did quite well. And the
[00:25:59.080]blooms appear about two weeks earlier than other pink salvia. And to be named an all-American
[00:26:03.960]selection, it has to have something unique about it. So that was one of the main reasons it was
[00:26:08.760]named that. But that's great for the pollinators if they can feed for two weeks longer on these
[00:26:14.280]plants. Purple fairy tail salvia is a purple one. There's a lot of purple salvia, the perennial ones
[00:26:21.880]and so on. And so, you know, it's a great plant to be able to grow. And so, you know, I'm going to
[00:26:22.180]But this one is a little bit of a unique shaped flower. And the foliage is kind of more of a rosette with those larger leaves, but I really like this purple fairy tail and it did quite well in the Minnesota trials.
[00:26:36.500]Melampodium is one that we probably don't hear as much about, but this is a very prolific bloomer. And that's one thing we do want with our for our pollinators. We want them to be able to get a good meal.
[00:26:52.160]We want them to be able to get one stop. So Mary Jane was talking about planting and massing at least five to seven plants or at least find if you can find a plant that has masses of blossoms, you could get by with two or three possibly.
[00:27:04.360]So kind of nice compact plant about 24 inches by 24 inches. In the Minnesota trial, they did show star and that it made the top nine of the 30 that they were testing.
[00:27:17.960]And this one would a complimentary plant would be my favorite.
[00:27:22.140]Salvia. My favorite salvia is Victoria blue and that I grow. I've grown for years because it performs great for me and I can attest in here. It has a butterfly in it, but it is is loaded with bees frequently and beetles as well.
[00:27:37.660]But mostly butterfly and bees and it would make a great complimentary plant in the garden with the melon podium. They would look well together and bloom at about the same time to get that mass of blooms.
[00:27:52.120]Zinnias. Zinnias are great annual flowers for pollinators and lots of blooms with little effort. For those of you that have grown zinnia, you know they're quite easy to grow and direct seed in the garden and they'll come back
[00:28:08.580]or grow and do great and have a nice mass of blooms. Very, very little effort. Pretty tough plant.
[00:28:16.600]They have a nice landing pad, we say, especially for butterflies, but other insects too. They like that
[00:28:22.100]wide and open. It's easy to access the anthers and the nectar. Nice landing pad for those butterflies.
[00:28:30.660]I loved, in the University of Minnesota, they described zinnia as that wide and open, making it
[00:28:37.380]easy for pollinators to do business with the flower. So I had to put that in there because I
[00:28:43.060]like the description. In the trial, the one that they trialed was NV zinnia, which is actually a green
[00:28:52.080]to yellow-green bloom, and it is an heirloom. It's been around for quite a long time. I couldn't find
[00:28:57.980]a great picture of it, so I used the University of Minnesota's picture, so it is a little bit blurry
[00:29:02.380]there, but that is the one that was the top nine of the 30. But zinnias overall, just about all of
[00:29:09.900]the zinnias, some of them that are the really tight double forms might not be quite as well. You want
[00:29:16.140]these more open, more of a single type bloom, usually is a little better for our pollinator
[00:29:22.060]pollinators. Sunflowers, these, the last two that music box mix, and the lemon queen sunflower were
[00:29:31.900]the two in the Minnesota trial that did the best. But no, with sunflowers, there are pollen
[00:29:38.280]sunflowers, and pollen free sunflowers. So the pollen free sunflowers will still provide nectar
[00:29:47.340]for the for our insects. But that pollen is so
[00:29:52.040]critical and critical and so important for so many of our insects, particularly the bees,
[00:29:56.320]they need that for a protein source. So if you're growing the sunflowers, you might want to make
[00:30:01.820]note of that the reason they produce the pollen free sunflowers is so they wouldn't be so messy
[00:30:07.400]and cut flower arrangements, and they want to have the pollen. So great for cut flower, but maybe not
[00:30:13.880]as great for our pollinators. So for a pollinator garden, just try to stir clear of the pollen free sunflowers. A lot
[00:30:22.020]of the ornamental ones now are branching type sunflowers, so you get a lot more flowers rather
[00:30:27.300]than the old standard confectionary or oil type sunflowers that are really tall. They have one
[00:30:34.100]bloom per plant. That one bloom provides a lot of foraging for insects, but the branching ones
[00:30:41.540]are obviously are going to provide more blooms. And you can see this was one, I apologize, this
[00:30:52.000]one graduated last Sunday. So I didn't write down the name or I've long since forgotten it, but this
[00:30:58.140]is one of the branching, one of the newer branching type, even though it was 17 years ago.
[00:31:02.920]All right, I shouldn't say that, 13 years ago. Okay, Black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hurda. I know we
[00:31:09.560]typically think of these as being perennials and many of them are perennial, but Rudbeckia hurda
[00:31:14.560]is kind of considered a short-lived perennial. So sometimes it's treated more as an annual or even a
[00:31:21.980]long-lived perennial. And in the University of Minnesota trial, the orange fudge black-eyed
[00:31:25.400]Susan and the prairie sun black-eyed Susan were made that top nine. This is a very long season
[00:31:33.820]of bloom, June to September. And if you get the Rudbeckia hurda, the Rudbeckia fulgida,
[00:31:38.860]such as Goldstrom, that's more of the perennial one, more of a little bit longer-lived perennial.
[00:31:44.600]Just to take as an aside, I think this is a lot of fun. You see the words ultraviolet,
[00:31:51.960]absorbance, and reflectance. So Heather Holmes, in her book about pollinators, one of her books
[00:31:59.020]about pollinators, really describes many unique things about different flowers and the different
[00:32:05.420]pollinators. So she had made note that this black-eyed Susan has the ultraviolet, and some
[00:32:11.300]of you may know what I'm talking about, but this is what a bee sees, and this is what we see.
[00:32:21.940]And that's pretty, this, I believe this is a Rudbeckia here, but the rest of them you can
[00:32:26.240]see what a bee sees, what we see, etc., etc. So these are viewed as ultraviolet nectar guides,
[00:32:32.340]so what it does is they just, they help the bee, they help the insect zero in on where the good
[00:32:37.740]stuff is, so they don't have to expend energy crawling all over a larger flower or whatnot
[00:32:43.100]to figure out where that good stuff right in the center is, where the nectar and the pollen is.
[00:32:48.620]Now I don't, I would say that not all flowers have these ultraviolet
[00:32:51.920]nectar guides, but of the ones that do, bees are the ones that can see that.
[00:32:56.400]And I love sharing this with kids. Kids just love it. They really get into it, and it makes them
[00:33:03.460]more interested in insects, especially bees that they're usually scared of. Okay, that was, I'm
[00:33:10.580]going to end on the annuals there. I'm going to mention a couple of shrubs. So there's not a lot
[00:33:16.220]of shrubs that bloom later in the summer. Most of our shrubs are spring bloomers, but
[00:33:21.900]buttonbush is one that will start blooming in June. And usually it'll say June and July,
[00:33:27.960]but I took this picture on the state fairgrounds right at state fair entry day, and that's late
[00:33:34.120]August, about the third week of August. So they will bloom up until August. You can see the
[00:33:40.140]unique flower, Sputnik, Sputnik blooms, they're called. And you can see they dry down into kind
[00:33:48.120]of a hard, not really a hard ball, but a brownish round ball.
[00:33:51.880]Which I think continues to add some ornament. Some people may not. This one has beautiful,
[00:33:57.100]the foliage stays nice and ornamental all season long. Some of our shrubs, I have a Grefsheim
[00:34:03.300]spirea that blooms like crazy, but then the rest of the season it's kind of ratty looking.
[00:34:08.320]So I like shrubs or plants where the foliage, once it's finished blooming, the foliage will
[00:34:13.660]continue to look nicer up until it blooms. These are large shrubs. So the ones, the state fairgrounds,
[00:34:21.860]looked or saw they were probably seven feet tall. So they can get up to 12 feet. There is one called
[00:34:28.440]sugar sack, which is only supposed to get about four by four feet. I have a question mark there
[00:34:32.860]because I always say if it says it'll get four feet tall, just assume it'll get five or six.
[00:34:37.760]It doesn't always pan out, but it seems like shrubs get a little larger than
[00:34:41.400]they're advertised to get. I just planted one last spring. So in a few years, I'll let you know how
[00:34:47.560]large it is. This is one that tolerates wet soils. I know in
[00:34:51.840]Kathleen, in our first pollinator program, talked about rain gardens, and this is one that we do
[00:34:58.840]recommend for rain gardens, or if you have particularly wet sites. You still want them to
[00:35:03.640]be fairly well drained, but it'll tolerate inundation in a rain garden for up to 48 hours.
[00:35:08.740]Bluebeard or blue mist. This is Caryopterus, sometimes called blue mist false spirea,
[00:35:17.400]but it is not a spirea. It is one of our suffrutescents,
[00:35:21.820]and what we mean by that is the roots, the crown is woody, but the stems, the above ground stems
[00:35:30.120]often winter keel. So this past winter, we had some pretty cold temperatures,
[00:35:34.220]so a lot of our suffrutescents did die back to nearly to the ground.
[00:35:38.680]And so they kind of act more like a herbaceous perennial when they do that.
[00:35:43.080]But this is just a buzz with bees and other insects when it is blooming and starts blooming
[00:35:51.800]in August. You're going to get your heaviest bloom in August, but it'll bloom into September.
[00:35:56.360]Not a real, you know, they probably get, because we cut them back, the one I had in my yard because
[00:36:05.040]I had to cut it back so often, it rarely got up above two feet. But if it did, if we had a mild
[00:36:10.760]winter, then I didn't have to cut it back too far, it would get up to three feet. These are very,
[00:36:16.360]very drought tolerant. You can see kind of that lighter color grayish foliage and a lot of times
[00:36:21.780]lighter grayish type foliage are considered to be drought tolerant. Not all the time, but often.
[00:36:27.920]Okay, so that was a couple of shrubs. I didn't, another one would be seven suns shrubs. I didn't
[00:36:36.580]include it in the PowerPoint, but I was thinking later that I should have. So if you've never heard
[00:36:41.900]of seven suns shrubs, this is a very tall one as well, probably 12 feet tall, kind of almost looks
[00:36:48.280]like a multiple stemmed tree more
[00:36:51.760]than a shrub, but they are, it's another one that'll bloom later in the summer and is noted
[00:36:57.820]for being a good pollinator plant. So seven suns shrub if you want to check that one out.
[00:37:02.100]Okay, into the perennials. Again, so many plants that bloom in July and September, October, it was
[00:37:09.960]hard to decide what to include. So I kind of went with mostly the natives.
[00:37:15.160]Bee balm or monarda up here in the upper right hand corner is purple rooster.
[00:37:21.740]I took this picture in the pollinator garden on East Campus and I liked it for that deep deep
[00:37:28.700]magenta blossoms. That was a deeper more vivid color that I had seen on many of our monardas.
[00:37:37.420]This one will tolerate part shade as you know, but in part shade it tends to be more susceptible to
[00:37:43.020]powdery mildew that can be an issue on the leaves. So ideally full sun, you're going to get the most blooming and you
[00:37:51.720]will probably have a little bit less trouble with the powdery mildew if you grow it in full sun where there's good air circulation.
[00:37:57.960]Like many perennials, this is one that probably should be divided fairly often. And if you deadhead those spent blossoms
[00:38:05.300]after they bloom, you'll get a little bit longer season to bloom.
[00:38:09.340]And our native one, of course, is wild bergamot, Monarda fitzulosa, and that's lavender, very,
[00:38:21.700]very open to bees, soldier beetles, so all kinds of beetles, you will find on the wild bergamot.
[00:38:32.180]If you're wondering why it's called wild bergamot, the European settlers named it that
[00:38:37.180]because it reminded them of bergamot plant back home, back in Europe, the aroma of it.
[00:38:45.320]Okay, butterfly milkweed. A lot of people I know are very familiar with this,
[00:38:51.680]but it's an excellent plant, and we need our milkweeds, of course, for our monarch butterflies
[00:38:56.120]and great larval plants. I'd always heard that butterfly milkweed was slow to establish,
[00:39:04.320]and if you planted it, it might take two, three, four years before you saw much for blooming,
[00:39:09.480]but I've been planting them and growing quite a few recently, and this one in the
[00:39:15.500]upper right-hand corner, this was the one year after it was planted.
[00:39:21.660]I'm not even sure it was a full year after it was planted, but only one year, and it was just
[00:39:28.940]loaded with blossoms, did excellent, as I said, a larval plant. Another thing I like about the
[00:39:34.920]butterfly milkweed is the pods. I think are very ornamental. They're different than the common
[00:39:40.180]milkweed, which is a very good pollinator plant too, but they're kind of narrow, stand upright,
[00:39:46.360]kind of that radish, so I think they're just as ornamental almost as the blossom, so they're
[00:39:51.640]tough, as you've probably heard, it's tough to transplant because of a deeper tap root,
[00:39:55.740]so plant it where you want it to stay.
[00:39:58.780]If you're a complementary plant to butterfly milkweed, I think is Russian sage, and this is
[00:40:10.780]one is peekaboo. Russian sage can get very tall, three, four foot, and sometimes I think it looks
[00:40:16.680]a little scraggly. Great pollinator plant, but if you're needing something a little bit smaller,
[00:40:21.620]peekaboo. This was growing at Harmon Nursery down by York. This is a nursery pretty close to York,
[00:40:29.620]Nebraska, mainly known for growing daylilies, but they have other perennials. And she had this
[00:40:35.600]combination of this peekaboo Russian sage with the butterfly milkweed, and I thought it was a very
[00:40:41.600]complimentary plant and a neat combination. Great for the pollinators. Of course, our purple cone
[00:40:47.600]flowers are good pollinator plants. The common pollinator plant, which I'm going to show you
[00:40:51.600]here. Bees like to circle around that cone as they're collecting their pollen. I've kind of
[00:40:57.580]watched to see if this happens. I haven't actually really seen it. I guess, Jody, you do a lot more
[00:41:02.580]insect watching than me, so if you've seen that behavior, let us know. Tell us about it. But
[00:41:08.580]there's three to about three or four native pollinator cone flowers, or at least three, and
[00:41:15.580]they're all excellent for pollinators. The Echinacea purpurea is probably the one that
[00:41:21.580]we most often see in the landscapes and perennial gardens. Pale purple cone flower is another
[00:41:27.580]native flowers. The petals are a little bit paler pink, which is maybe why it's not quite as
[00:41:34.580]popular, but as not as readily available. But they're all excellent for pollinators, whichever
[00:41:41.580]one you choose to grow. They can have some trouble with Aster's yellow, where they get the
[00:41:47.580]really weird looking, if you've ever seen green, weird,
[00:41:51.560]funny looking. That's probably one issue that for which there is no control.
[00:41:57.560]I do want to mention a couple of the other coneflowers.
[00:42:01.560]Gray head coneflower, Radomida. This is not a purple coneflower. It's a completely different genus.
[00:42:08.560]So, but these are good pollinator plants as well. And our prairie coneflower, the red one is Mexican hat.
[00:42:16.560]So any of these would be good in the garden for pollinators.
[00:42:21.540]Allium, the native one is nodding onion.
[00:42:28.540]Millennium is probably not a native perennial, but, and I don't think it's Allium surium.
[00:42:33.540]So it's not the native one, but it's an excellent one.
[00:42:37.540]2018 perennial plant of the year and highly noted for being a great pollinator plant.
[00:42:43.540]These will self-sow, but they kind of spread nicely. They're easy to control.
[00:42:51.520]But you can see the massive amount of blossoms. So great foraging for our pollinators.
[00:43:05.520]And I have to mention that Agastache. Okay, this is giant or giant hyssop is the probably the native one.
[00:43:11.520]And I'm sorry, this was another one of those pictures that I took with it was not labeled with the variety or cultivar, but I, it was particularly pretty interesting.
[00:43:21.500]Especially with the blue grama grass, the site that the seed heads I'm sorry, that looked like little eyelashes and but this is would be a nice complimentary plant at least I thought so because of the difference in shape plant form contrasting lavender and a little bit deeper purple, but of the giant hyssop there's numerous numerous cultivars some of firebird is kind of a reddish or not reddish but more of a orangey pink, maybe I would call it reddish
[00:43:51.480]orange, reddish orange, but there's numerous Augusta cheese out there and they're great pollinator plants.
[00:43:58.040]Swamp milkweed, I really like swamp milkweed, it's getting later in the summer and really doesn't start blooming until late August and blooms through September.
[00:44:10.000]This is another one that will tolerate wet soil so we use it quite frequently in rain gardens. I took this picture in a rain garden at a school in Omaha.
[00:44:21.460]And the only thing that my swamp milkweed in my yard is usually covered with oleander aphids, at least on the very tips. And so that does make them look a little bit ratty.
[00:44:33.100]But if you like, if you like insects, oleander aphids are bright, bright, vivid orange, just like the monarch butterflies. So they're kind of fun to watch. I tend to just kind of squish them as I see them and my fingers are orange most of the summer and then at some point I just let them go.
[00:44:51.440]Gay feather or liatris, another one of our natives that's listed in just about any pollinator book that you will find for pollinator plants. We have the three that are probably most often found available.
[00:45:07.520]The prairie or tall blazing star that can get about very tall about five foot up to depending on the variety that you're growing or the location that it's growing in.
[00:45:21.420]All of these are drought tolerant, but dotted is considered to be one of the most drought tolerant.
[00:45:25.980]And usually a shorter one if you're growing where it is very droughty, dry soil, it's probably only going to reach two feet if even that.
[00:45:34.120]Meadow blazing star is the other one, one to three foot. One thing to make note of is voles love gay feather, or at least in a lot of our rain gardens where we planted these.
[00:45:46.920]And the tall blazing star is the one that we recommend for rain gardens.
[00:45:51.400]These other two, if you have a wetter soil, they like it a little bit on the drier side and they don't tolerate it. But tall blazing star will perform okay in rain gardens, but we've lost quite a few of them because voles go in and they like to eat the corn.
[00:46:08.940]A complementary plant to gay feather is hellenium, okay, or sneezeweed, another one of our natives. Named sneezeweed because
[00:46:21.380]the pioneers used to like to dry those flowers and like snuff and sniff them and make themselves
[00:46:25.880]sneeze because they thought it was healthy. I put in compass plant because this is a very
[00:46:33.340]tall one. It can get up to nine feet tall. We have it in the Central Community College Columbus
[00:46:38.680]Pollinator Garden. That's a huge garden that can handle this size of a plant, and you can see how
[00:46:45.180]large and coarse those leaves are, okay. But when I would go up and visit this
[00:46:51.360]pollinator garden, when this plant was blooming July to September, it probably
[00:46:55.380]had the most variety and diversity of pollinators. These were just a few of the
[00:46:59.080]pictures that I took of it, and so it's, again, you have to have a large garden,
[00:47:05.300]more of almost a prairie, which is like a CCC. This pollinator garden is huge,
[00:47:11.360]and so this works well there. A good complementary plant would be the
[00:47:17.740]Russian sage that's taller, okay, maybe not the peekaboo one,
[00:47:21.340]that I showed you earlier that went well with butterfly milkweed, but Russians
[00:47:25.360]say this would be just a very nice tall one, and they bloom at about the same
[00:47:29.000]time, and they would complement each other. Fall bloomers, I just have a few
[00:47:35.920]left and we can get to questions. Fall bloomers are extremely important for the
[00:47:40.360]late season foraging or collection of pollen and whatnot by bees, so Joe
[00:47:47.000]Pyeweed is one of my absolute favorites, and I think I
[00:47:51.320]like it because it's just such a neat and tidy plant. I mentioned that with the
[00:47:56.200]shrub earlier, that I like plants that look nice and tidy and neat even when
[00:48:01.940]they're not blooming, and this one sure fits that bill. And it's tall, even the
[00:48:07.840]tall one that can get up to six feet or taller. I'm sure they've lodged under
[00:48:12.800]certain conditions, but I've certainly never seen them lodge or flop over like
[00:48:16.440]some of our taller perennials can do. Little Joe, this is Little Joe that you're seeing in the
[00:48:21.300]picture, only gets about four feet tall, maybe five. And this is one that we do recommend in
[00:48:28.120]rain gardens, in the bottom of rain gardens, because it too will tolerate wet soils. And
[00:48:32.780]anytime I walk by it when it's blooming, you can hear the bees buzzing and it's just alive
[00:48:38.620]with the butterflies fritting around. Goldenrod, of course. We have many, many different types of
[00:48:46.080]native goldenrod. Stiff goldenrod is the one you'll often see referenced in pollinator books
[00:48:51.280]but one of those fall bloomers that's so critical. Wichita Mountain is a little bit different
[00:48:58.080]looking goldenrod but it's becoming a very popular one in perennial gardens and if I
[00:49:05.160]correct me, Scott, but I think I've heard you say this is one of your favorites.
[00:49:08.380]Yes, Wichita Mountains is a phenomenal, phenomenal one to keep.
[00:49:16.480]Yep, yep and great for pollinators. I had to throw in showy stone
[00:49:21.260]crop sedum because it's definitely a late season blooming one, good
[00:49:25.420]complementary to the goldenrods if you want them blooming at the same time.
[00:49:29.740]And no, it's not native, but when it, this, I have it in a hell strip that I
[00:49:35.660]never watered. It does excellent and when I walk by it, when it's blooming, flies, I
[00:49:42.720]mean, I've never seen the number of different flies that are on it. Painted
[00:49:46.680]lady butterfly a few years ago when we had so many of them were just massing on
[00:49:51.240]this. And of course, it's always full of bees as well. My last one is New England
[00:49:56.920]Aster is a critical one, just a butterfly and bee magnet. And as you know, it'll
[00:50:02.860]bloom September up until frost. There's many different colors of New England
[00:50:07.140]Aster white, blue, pink, magenta, other colors.
[00:50:11.580]And again, in that fall, these things that are blooming late into the fall are so
[00:50:16.720]critical for that that foraging and the collection to just food
[00:50:21.220]reserves in the fall to get them through the winter and so on.
[00:50:23.960]And for those, whatever mama bees are nesting and laying their eggs,
[00:50:29.840]they need that pollen to be able to collect it to make that pollen bread.
[00:50:51.200]Thank you!

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GROBigRed - Gardening: Pollinator Blooms for All Seasons

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