Secrets to Crafting the Perfect Pollinator Haven

Serome Hamlin shows how to use store bought and homemade options to provide places in your landscape for native pollinators to shelter, feed, and lay eggs. Featured on VHG episode 2401; March 2024.
#virginia #gardening #pollinators #pollinatorgarden

[@merk9569]

I have four large piles of fallen branches and twigs in my back yard and two raised pond liners that haven’t been put in the ground yet although they have water and plants. About 75% of the yard which is heavily shaded from mature trees is now natural. The house was built 50 years ago in a stand of mature tulip poplars; at the back is a shallow, free flowing stream with very deep banks. There are huge mature shade loving shrubs growing in a couple of islands as well as ground covers but not much else. I am trying to find native plants that will grow in shade to fill in so that food and necessary cover is provided for wildlife.
I had expected to have abundant wildlife. Instead, in the last year, I have seen a pair of squirrels, a rabbit (once), a couple of crows and one robin, even with a feeder. It is so sad that a large yard in a suburban neighborhood has such a small diversity of wildlife. Then, last week, I think that the piles of branches and sticks began to bear dividends. A family of wrens has claimed one pile of sticks as theirs. A large black snake had claimed one of the raised pond liners until I interrupted his sunning. He was between two of the piles. A day later, I was sitting on my front porch when a red tailed hawk flew fifteen feet in front of me across the yard with a mouse in his talons. I felt bad for the mouse, but as I had told my new landscaper when he had offered to carry off the piles of branches, they were serving a much needed purpose. They attract insects, amphibians, reptiles and rodents, all of which attract birds and mammals. He had looked at me strangely; he had no way of knowing that I am a biologist as well as gardener! 😁

[@fernly2]

IMHO bees use propolis to withstand small predators like mites. What plants do they need to produce the most propolis?