Pollinator Garden Profile - Wendy Mahaney

#killyourlawn

Wendy Mahaney, an environmental scientist and former executive director of Sustainable Saratoga, moved to Wilton in 2015. Since then, Wendy has slowly transformed her suburban lawn into a thriving ecosystem filled with native plants, butterflies, bumblebees, fireflies, hummingbirds, bluebirds, voles and a few ravenous bunnies.

In 2023, Wendy, with the help of her husband and daughters, removed most of her remaining front lawn and replaced it with plants indigenous to this region. In 2022, her flower garden was around 1450 square feet; in 2023, she added 1800 square feet of garden beds.

We were excited about the transformation of her lawn and asked if she would talk to us about her garden and the decision making that went into it.

Growing up, my family had a huge vegetable garden and my mom and I created several flower gardens around the house. We never gave much thought to whether something was native or not, we just bought things that were pretty and put them in the garden alongside what I refer to as our sentimental plants – plants that had special memories, like the ones that came from my great-grandmother’s gardens.

I always loved urban yards that were entirely flower gardens. My sister converted her small front lawn into a beautiful flower garden that looked amazing all year long. While my suburban yard is a bit bigger than the typical urban front yard, I kept dreaming about ditching the lawn altogether. Grass isn’t meant to grow in our hot, dry, sandy environment. Native plants have evolved to live in this environment, so why not work with nature instead of fighting it? Joining Sustainable Saratoga’s pollinator group provided the ingredients I needed to make the dream a reality. I had comradery and shared expertise from some amazing women, and a supply of native plants. So, 2023 was the year I decided to just do it.

I spent a huge amount of time thinking about the garden design, which plants to use, how to create paths, and how to keep it natural but not so wild that it bothered my neighbors. I wanted to use this garden as an opportunity to show my neighbors that a mostly native flower garden/pollinator habitat can be a vibrant and beautiful alternative to the cookie cutter, low-diversity, boring American lawn.

While I try to only plant native species now, I didn’t pull out the cultivars or the sentimental plants from my great-grandmother’s and my mother’s gardens. The new plants I’ve added in the last two years have mostly come from Sustainable Saratoga’s Pollinator Palooza native plant sale and from Wild Things Rescue Nursery in Valley Falls, NY. It is important to me that my plants are not treated with insecticides that can linger in the soil and be toxic to insects for a long time, so I only buy plants from reliable sources.

Adding a new 1800 square foot garden is not cheap, but it is a one-time expense. Mulch, compost, plants and equipment rental cost around $1700 – almost half of that was for the compost to try to increase the organic matter content of the sandy soils. I installed approximately 130 plants in the new garden, most of which were purchased, bringing my native species count up to 50. I added 36 of those species in the last two years, so you can see where my gardening interests are heading!

Blossoming Where We’re Planted

How Gardening Builds Community, Nurturing Ourselves and the Environment

Guest post by Bethany Bowyer Khan

This post is a call to action to garden for gardeners and non-gardeners alike, but is also a call to connect with ourselves and our local community. I hope reading this provides an opportunity to step back and consider how supporting our local ecosystem through planting, particularly native perennials, fosters a better sense of self, connects us with not just the bee buddies in our gardens, but also builds lasting relationships with one another.

The title of this post is a bit of a play on words with the well-known saying “grow where you are planted”. In one sense, it occurred to me that these words apply themselves literally to the concept of supporting the growth of native species that have been self-sowing for thousands of years on the grounds that we call home today. In another sense, growing where one is planted can refer to growing as a community, and also growing as an individual within that community. I have always felt frustrated with this quote in that I questioned whether where I was “planted” was in fact the right place for me to grow.

My husband and I were lucky to begin calling Saratoga Springs our home two years ago when we moved up from Brooklyn, New York. Knowing few people in the area, and having an 18 month-old daughter, I felt a calling to connect with my community more intentionally than I had ever contemplated. Connecting with others was important to not only my personal well-being, but for building connections with my whole family. And looking back two years, it’s incredible that so many of the most rewarding relationships that we’ve made have unintentionally been through connecting with the earth and our gardens.

Gardeners each have our own reasons for growing. In many cases as I have found, those reasons are often personal and more significant than we usually slow down to contemplate. In this way, I encourage friends to get their hands in the dirt because I’ve always found it so therapeutic and fulfilling. Regardless of why we initially make our way into working the soil, once we’re there I’ve found that often leads to only positive outcomes. And by sharing my interests and experiences with others, I’ve learned that what I have received in return has been quite a gift.

Since moving here, we have had friends reach out with extra plants that they’ve offered to transfer to our gardens. We’ve offered up our own rhubarb annually through my Instagram account to give away to anyone interested – and have met new neighbors as a result! Our neighbors down the road have offered their peaches and vegetables from their kitchen gardens. We’ve even pureed this local food that nourished my son when he began eating solids last summer. We have had friends offer their lilacs and hydrangeas to create locally-sourced floral designs in our home. I have even had a cold call message from someone on Instagram who offered dahlia tubers, shared her tips on planting when I picked them up, and then offered gorgeous cuts of her peonies while I was there. I’ve been to networking events where we’ve foraged for clippings from someone’s gardens and created bouquets from her hard work while talking business. This generosity sticks with me. And I feel like I’ve tapped into something worth nurturing. It’s about the plants and the ecosystems, yes, but it’s also about the people.

I’ve enjoyed leveraging these connections, and sharing what I have and what I know with others. About a month ago I brought my daughter, who is now three years old, with me to help prepare for Sustainable Saratoga’s wildly successful annual native plant sale. It was her first official day of volunteering, and she certainly held her own by watering the plants, and playing with a golden retriever she met while I did my best to contribute. There was a moment for me that day while the group of women there were quietly planting and buzzing through work stations each carrying on various conversations that I realized how good it felt to just be present. It didn’t matter what we were planting or discussing, but just being there – acknowledging that organic community – was a tremendous gift. And it helped make this place feel like home.

Since moving here, I’ve partnered with the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program (an incredible resource) through my Instagram account, Arcadian Revival, and have encouraged folks to plant native species. The feedback from non-gardeners and gardeners who have not thought much about native plants has been tremendous. I love an opportunity to use my platform to have a positive impact. But outside of the digital world, as an individual, it is these connections that remain the most rewarding.

I hope that those reading these words who do not garden, consider giving it a try. I can attest from first-hand experience that the quiet time in our garden is one where I have some of my best ideas surface, a place where I’ve turned to in times of joy and sorrow. And so when I connect with fellow gardeners, other artists if you will, I like to imagine the unspoken ways that we’re connecting with one another by just being together and sharing a tip or two.

The kindness, generosity, sharing of knowledge, and sharing of plants themselves has been one of the most meaningful and authentic ways that we’ve felt welcomed to this community. And I aspire to give back and to share with others all that I feel lucky to have discovered myself.

And if you are a gardener, I hope you’ve been able to tap into the amazing folks in the area who have a shared passion for gardening. And I wonder, have you imagined new ways of sharing your experience growing with others? Of connecting through events or of opening dialogs that lead to new conversations and ideas? I feel that making these connections is not only self-nurturing, but is necessary for strengthening our gardening community and thus our ecosystems in return.

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If Bethany’s post has inspired you to start your own garden, we have a great primer on starting a native pollinator garden from scratch

See our Pollinator pages for more information, plant recommendations, and resources

We have heard from many people who want to know how to get started with native plant gardening. Although we have talked around this issue before, if you have never planted a garden, some of our suggestions may assume too much basic knowledge. This post aims to tell you how to start a pollinator garden from scratch in and around Saratoga County, New York. The timing and plants will be different in other areas, but the basic principles will be the same.

Pick your spot

If you want to plant pollinator flowers, you need sun. Ideally, the garden should have 8 or more hours of full sun, but I have a garden in the shadow of a building that only gets six hours of full sun and it does just fine. Pollinators and their flower hosts thrive in sun. You can have a nice garden with native shade plants, but it won’t attract as many pollinators as a sunny garden.

Prepare your soil

To prepare the earth for your young plants, you need to remove the competition. That is, you have to get rid of the turf grass or other plants that are in the way. The best way that I know of to prepare a garden bed is to use the “lasagna method,” also known as sheet mulching. In the lasagna method you cut down or pull out and discard whatever vegetation is in your future native plant bed, then dig or use a stirrup hoe to disturb the roots that remain in the ground (dig out and throw away big pieces of root so they don’t re-sprout). Once the soil is more or less bare, place a layer of corrugated brown cardboard over the ground where you want your flower bed to be. Black and white newspaper also works, but use several layers. Don’t use glossy magazine inserts or even the funnies – save those for wrapping birthday presents. Place a three- to four-inch layer of high-quality organic compost on top the cardboard. You can make the compost yourself or purchase it from a nursery or a reliable supplier.

Water the bed well. If it doesn’t rain, keep watering the bed so the cardboard will start to break down. Wait six weeks for the unwanted seeds and plant parts under the cardboard to germinate and die. The cardboard will be soft and you can plant your native perennials right into it. Everything under the cardboard will be dead and rotting, perfect for feeding your new plants. The lasagna method is great because it controls weeds while adding aged compost and decomposing plant matter to your garden from the very beginning. It doesn’t matter if you have to delay your planting for six weeks and don’t get your plants into the ground till the end of June or early July – they are perennials, not tomatoes, and will do just fine. You can also plant native perennials in the fall, so if you miss the May-June planting season, prepare your garden bed in late summer and plant into it in September. You can even start a lasagna bed in the fall and wait until spring to plant into it. In that case, don’t bother watering, nature will take care of it.

Pesticides and lawn care

If you have a lawn service that uses herbicides or insecticides, or if you use them yourself on your yard, DO NOT PLANT A POLLINATOR GARDEN. The grubs in lawns that people think they have to spray are beetles. Beetles are insects. The pesticides that kill those beetles will kill your Monarch butterflies and bumblebees. Pesticides drift to nontarget flower beds so any pollinator garden adjacent to a lawn or other part of your property or a near neighbor’s property that gets sprayed will be a death trap for the pollinators that come to your flowers. If you want a pollinator garden, you cannot use insecticides. It is a basic choice that must be made before you start your garden. If you like birds and butterflies, the choice is easy.

Plan your garden

My suggestion is to spend several hours on the internet looking at plants available from regional native plant nurseries that supply plants suitable for the Northeast United States (in our case, some of the nurseries may be in Ohio or Pennsylvania, but don’t go too far south or too far west or the plants will not native to our region). This list of Native Plants for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects for the Northeast Region from the Xerces Society is a great place to start. See what looks good to you. Doodle sketches. Learn what kinds of insects are attracted to which flowers. Include common milkweed for the monarchs in your plan. Then be flexible. It is a garden, not rocket science. Your goal is to help pollinators and create something of beauty and interest. Everything else doesn’t matter. And if you make a mistake this year, you can fix it next year. Gardening is wonderful that way; each year is a new opportunity.

In planning your garden keep in mind that large patches of the same flower are easier for pollinators to find and make their foraging more efficient. We tend to want to plant in an orderly fashion with contrasting colors and formal garden patterns. Pollinators prefer big swaths of a single blooming plant species and will switch what they search for a number of times over the course of the season as flowers bloom and fade. If you can tolerate it and have space, plant for the convenience of insects; a full bed of black eyed susans or coneflowers in one part of the garden, a large border of goldenrods and asters in another part, a milkweed patch for the monarch butterflies in August and September. If you don’t want to have large patches, try to use at least three of the same species of plant together rather than using single plants.

Some help with the planning: Prairie Moon Nursery sells native plants and has a fabulous set of filters that can help you plan your garden. You can sort plants by color, height, bloom time, region, and climate zone. In Saratoga Springs, we are in zone 5a. Pick plants that are easy to grow, that interest you, that bloom at different times and that are hosts to both native bees and native butterflies. Some of the best pollinator plants in our region are wood asters, New England asters, lance leaf coreopsis, black eyed Susans, blue lobelia, Joe-Pye weed, woodland sunflowers, blue false indigo, milkweed, mountain mint, native bee balms, native coneflowers, evening primrose and any and all goldenrods.

Consult native plant nurseries and the Garden for Wildlife program of the National Wildlife Federation for ideas. You can also talk to/take a field trip to visit one of our near-by native plant nurseries: Wild Things Rescue Nursery or Catskill Native Nursery. This is an area of growing interest for horticulturalists, so new native plant nurseries may be popping up soon. You can also look at the plant list for Sustainable Saratoga’s Pollinator Palooza native plant sale (heldJune 4) and work some of those plants into your plan since they are well suited for local conditions in our region and were selected because pollinators love them. Finally, download a plant app to your phone so that you can identify flowers you like when you go on nature walks or visit other people’s gardens. Seek is my favorite app for flowers; it tells you whether a plant is native or introduced so it is very useful for garden planning.

Buying and caring for your native perennials before planting

Be sure you deal only with nurseries or growers that do not use pesticides. If you buy native plants from a big box store, they will probably be treated with neonicotinoids or other harmful chemicals that will kill every insect pollinator that you attract to your garden. Do not buy from them, no matter how reasonable the price. If you are buying plants at the farmers’ market, ask the farmer if the plants are organically grown. If they aren’t, ask them what kinds of insecticides they use on them. If they give you any answer other than, “We don’t use insecticides,” shop elsewhere. And politely tell them why you are not buying from them so that they understand there is a market for insecticide-free bedding plants. It is safer to buy from a native plant nursery on line than from a big box store, a local non-native nursery or farmers who spray their plants with insecticides.

Only buy true native types, not cultivars or nativars. Our local pollinators evolved with our local plants. Although plant breeders may “improve” on those plants, that is, select for traits that are desirable to human gardeners such as unusual colors or extra petals, those traits are usually not as attractive to insects as they are to people. And those special traits may come at a cost to the quality of pollen or nectar or some function of the plant that makes appealing it to insect pollinators. Just say no to innovation.

If you have to wait a while to plant in the ground after purchasing your perennials, water the plants regularly since they dry out quickly in pots. Keep them in the sun outside unless they were greenhouse grown, in which case you should move them over the course of a week or so from dappled shade to full sun. If they aren’t used to direct sun, the intense light can burn their leaves. If that happens, it is not the end of the world, new leaves will grow. It is just better not to set your little plants back before you put them in the ground.

Planting

Dig a hole, put the plant into it so that it is covered up to the same spot on its stem as when it was in the pot. That is, not so deep that part of its green stem is in the ground and not so shallow that the tops of its roots are above the ground. Dig a hole big enough so you don’t have to curl the roots up to get them to fit in the hole. Fill the hole back in and tamp the soil down around the plant with your hands, not your feet. Soil contact is important so you want your plant to be firmly in place but you don’t want to compress the soil too much or trample the plant by mistake.

For spacing plants, look at the information on the Prairie Moon Nursery website or whatever information the nursery where you bought them provided you. Bigger plants need more space between them than smaller plants. Some plants spread easily, give them extra room. Most plants can be moved in the spring or fall if you make a mistake and plant them too closely together, so don’t fret about it. Milkweed may be an exception, it doesn’t like to be transplanted.

Watering

Water the plants every day for the first couple of weeks unless it rains. As they start to look healthy and grow, you can water less often, but watering at least every other day is important during the first growing season while their roots are establishing. If it is really hot and dry, water every day. Plants build their bodies out of water and thin air; you can help them out with the water part. Learn about photosynthesis and appreciate the miraculous way plants sustain life on earth. We need to eat, they create food for us and everyone else on the planet out of carbon dioxide and water. We need to breath, they emit oxygen and water as waste products of photosynthesis. Amazing, right? Pollinators are not the only creatures that depend on plants for their survival.

Weeding

Just like you need to give your plants bare ground to start out in life, you need to keep down the weeds until they get established. I once heard a farmer say that rather than yank out giant weeds, you should kill the weeds while they are small by tickling the ground weekly with a hoe. This is very good advice. Buy a stirrup hoe, keep it sharp by filing it between uses, and gently move it through the soil around your plants before the weeds get large. If a big weed pops up after you have gone on vacation or is too close to your perennial to use a hoe, you can pull it out by hand, but a stirrup hoe is the right tool for ground tickling. Around year two or three as your native plants grow and spread, weeding won’t be as important, especially if you have a big patch of one kind of plant.

Other Maintenance

Don’t put down wood chips or any other mulch except compost. You can add compost whenever you feel like it and can make the garden look nice with compost “mulch” if you like things tidy. Do not, under any circumstances, ever use insecticides. Don’t use herbicides. Don’t use non-organic chemical fertilizer. Native perennials don’t need much, they are tough northern species. With native plants, less is better. Leave them alone, except for watering, weeding and occasional composting. If a plant lists to the side, feel free to trim it lightly or trellis it or prop it up. And turn off your porch lights at night. Nocturnal insects and birds, as well as virtually all plants, do better with no artificial light. Porch lights, especially LED lights, interfere with wildlife of all kinds. Lights out for wildlife.

Putting the plants to bed in the winter

Don’t. They will be fine. Don’t deadhead the flowers or cut the stems down, leave them to be shelter and food for the small creatures living their lives in your yard. Don’t rake the leaves from the beds, they provide minerals and nutrients to your plants for free and are excellent overwintering substrate for fireflies. The plants will emerge through the leaves in the spring. Don’t put down wood chip mulch or other weed-smothering devices. Ground bees and bumble bees need bare ground for their nests and can’t penetrate wood chips. Whenever you think of an intervention to do in your native plant garden in the fall, go take a nap instead. In the spring, water again as needed, weed again as needed and maybe add some more compost. Fill in any gaps with new plants or, better yet, kill some more of your lawn and make your native plant bed bigger.

The nice thing about perennial native plants is that the conditions here are right for them and they are not as fussy as exotic plants that would really prefer to be on the heath in Scotland or on a warm grassy plain in China or something. They belong here, they can take care of themselves once they are in place. The insects recognize them and they continue their long evolutionary dance together. Right in your yard. You have a front row seat.

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Resources

See our Pollinator and Native Plants pages for information and resources

Get info on Composting from our Zero Waste committee

Pollinator Palooza native plant lists: 2023, 2022