Media Contact: Paul Murphy, pfxmurphy@gmail.com; or Beth Plummer, beth@sustainablesaratoga.org

Sustainable Saratoga announces NO MOW MAY, joining the nation-wide effort to encourage all homeowners, farmers, municipalities, highway departments and businesses to rest their lawnmowers through the end of May to help our highly at-risk pollinators.

Populations of pollinators and insects are being impacted the globe. Pesticides and habitat loss are the primary killers of these vital insects who pollinate 70 of 100 USA major crops. In 2021, 45% of bee colonies in the US were lost. Since 1998, 88% of Monarch Butterflies disappeared in the Eastern US and 95% of Monarchs have perished in the Western US.

Paul Murphy, Chair of Sustainable Saratoga’s Pollinator Committee, says about NO MOW MAY, “Our Earth’s pollinators and all insects are fighting for their very existence. Pesticides and habitat loss are the primary killers of these vital insects. NO MOW MAY is a Fundamental Assist for the Bees enabled by not cutting the pollen portals of the Clover, Violets, and Dandelions in May. The Net truth is: If you do not cut these wildflowers that appear in lawn acreage in the Spring, pollinators will leverage this pollen source to gain strength and nourishment during the tough May transition period.

We can all help increase pollinator populations by keeping mowers in garages and sheds and letting our lawns go natural through the end of May. This will allow the bees, moths, butterflies, and other pollinators to safely exit their winter ground homes and find the only nectar nourishment available during late April and early May.”

Across the country, communities who launched NO MOW MAY have experienced nice increases in bee and butterfly populations (5x more bees and 3x more bee species) just by delaying spring mowing and lawn treatments through the end of May.

To help spread the word, Sustainable Saratoga has NO MOW MAY lawn signs available for people to place on their yard announcing support of the effort. Signs come with a $10 requested donation and will be available at pick-up locations in Saratoga Springs and Stillwater. Signs can be purchased online by following this link  or by emailing pollinators@sustainablesaratoga.org. Pick up only; signs cannot be shipped.

Sustainable Saratoga | PO Box 454, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 | www.sustainablesaratoga.org

For more about NO MOW MAY, visit https://sustainablesaratoga.org/no-mow-may/

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ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION
Sustainable Saratoga is a not-for-profit organization that promotes sustainable practices and the protection of natural resources, through education, advocacy and action, for the benefit of current and future generations in the Saratoga Springs area. Since 2008, Sustainable Saratoga has been a leader in promoting awareness of environmental issues and what we as a local community can do to minimize our ecological impact while maintaining a high quality of life.

By Dianna Goodwin

If you are planting a tree this spring or working on landscaping around existing trees on your property, consider the needs of pollinators and other small creatures who live in your yard.

Give them a Soft Landing

“Soft landings” are natural landscapes designed for the area under the shade of a tree that take the survival of critters like fireflies and bumblebees into account. Insects need habitat for shelter and egg laying. In nature, that habitat is often under trees. If you think about a natural forest floor, it is covered with decaying plant parts like leaves, twigs, and rotting logs. Collectively, this forest floor covering is known as “duff”. You can create a healthy and ecologically significant microhabitat under your suburban trees by leaving the leaves and twigs that falls from a tree under the tree’s dripline (that is, under the circumference of the canopy above) and planting a diverse array of native shade plants in the natural flower bed that results. The duff provides a soft landing for insects seeking a vegetative substrate or connection with the ground for hiding from predators, pupating, finding moisture, or, in the case of many ground bees and beetles, excavating small burrows for egg laying.

Keep it natural

In order to create a soft landing for wildlife, you need to avoid conventional gardening practices like mowing under the trees, putting down landscape cloth, and adding “neat” wood chip mulch. Wood chip mulch creates an impenetrable barrier for insects trying to reach the ground. And never, ever apply any chemicals to a soft landing natural garden bed, or any pollinator garden. Don’t use insecticides or fungicides or herbicides or fertilizers. The native plants are nourished by the decaying leaves and do not need any other artificial input. Avoid damaging your tree’s roots: start planting about 3 feet away from the tree trunk. Plant seeds or small plugs which require minimal digging. Heather Holm’s website provides detailed information on how to create a Soft Landing bed.

Go native

It is important to use native plants that have been grown without insecticides in your soft landing bed. Avoid cultivars since they are usually less attractive to insects and birds than the original native plant and may provide inferior food rewards for pollinators and sap suckers. Sustainable Saratoga will be selling a number of native perennial shade plants that are suitable for a soft landing bed at the Pollinator Palooza Native Plant Sale on June 1, 2024. Plants anticipated to be offered in this year’s Palooza that will do well under a shade tree are included in this list.

You can also buy native plants online from Prairie Moon or from local native nurseries like Wild Things Rescue Nursery or Catskill Native Nursery. Do not buy plants from any nursery or big box store unless the plants are certified to be grown without pesticides. American Beauties plants are sold in nurseries throughout the region and are safe for wildlife. All other nursery plants are suspect and should not be placed in soft landing gardens as they may be death traps for insects.

Perfect for them and easy for you

Soft landing beds are easy to maintain once established. They don’t need raking or watering or spraying. You just leave them alone and enjoy the show.

Resources

See Heather Holm’s website for more information. Download a printable PDF including plant list.

Find more resources on our Pollinators and Native Plants pages

If you are a reader of our posts, you probably have some interest in wildlife and pollinator gardening. You may already know how beneficial it is to plant native perennials to support native insects and birds. You may also know that the single most important thing you can do as a wildlife gardener/responsible citizen of the world is to stop using insecticides on your lawn and garden.

What is the next step in your gardening odyssey from turf grass desert to regenerated biodiversity?

The next step is to stop chopping and/or bagging your leaves in the fall. Leaves left on the ground provide overwintering protection and insulation to bumblebees, butterflies, fireflies and a whole host of invertebrate and small vertebrate species that sleep in or on the soil in the winter. When you chop leaves with your lawn mower, you are also chopping up the small critters that live in the leaves. When you bag leaves, you are sending a generation of fireflies to the dump.

Leaves contain a treasure trove of nutrients that return to the earth to feed trees and other plants as they break down. They are also an excellent mulch. Unlike dyed wood chips, which many people use as mulch, leaves break down quickly and feed plants in the spring only a few months after they are shed by the trees. They are an important part of the nutrient cycle that goes on all around us.

The best practice is to leave the leaves where they fall, but if you really don’t like leaving leaves on your grass, you can rake them on to flower beds, under trees, or into piles at the edge of your yard. While you may not want a thick layer of leaves on top of your lawn, a thin layer doesn’t hurt the grass and actually helps to feed it. By spring, scatterings of leaves will disappear into the lawn. You don’t need to remove them from flowerbeds in the spring, the perennials will push right up through them. The remaining leaf litter will help suppress annual weeds in your garden beds.

Leaves are a valuable natural resource, and an important part of our environment; they should not be sent to the landfill.

This fall, please leave your leaves

For more information see:  

https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2015/OctNov/Gardening/Leave-the-Leaves

https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2022/10/17/fall-leave-leaves

https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/blog/leave-leaves-help-pollinators

Visit our Pollinators and Native Plants pages

Are you a Hellstrip Hero?

Do you have a hellstrip – that strip between the curb and the sidewalk? It’s usually owned by the municipality, but property owners are responsible for maintaining it.

At worst, it may be filled with lush, green turf grass that is maintained using pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and soaking up precious water at an alarming rate. Or maybe it’s just a patch of dirt and weeds.

But we can do better.

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There are Hellstrip Helpers out there who have planted annuals or maybe even perennials or trees. Hopefully these plants aren’t being treated with chemicals and require less watering than turf grass, and they certainly add a touch of beauty to the neighborhood.

And, how about this one that’s been turned into a veggie patch!

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And then there are the Hellstrip Heroes. We know you’re out there, and you have turned your Hellstrips into pollinator paradises, full of native plants that attract wildlife and don’t require watering, yet still manage to look beautiful to humans, too.

Here are just some that we’ve noticed around town

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Show us your hellstrips! Post photos on social media and use the hashtag #hellstriphero

Evaluate your site

Hellstrips present challenging conditions, especially if you live in an area with high vehicle or foot traffic. If you have any of these conditions, look for plants that can withstand them. Be sure to check local regulations. Your HOA and/or municipality may have rules about what can and can’t be planted.

• Snow and salt pile up in winter
• Compacted and/or poor soil
• Shade or blazing sun
• Lack of available water
• Dogs use it to do their business

Communicate and educate

Expect people to be curious. Talk to neighbors, HOA, and passers-by and let them know what you’re doing and why. Plant a sign to let people know what’s going on in your little plot.You can pick one up from us in Saratoga Springs ($25. Email pollinators@sustainablesaratoga.org for info) or by mail from the Xerces Society. Encourage neighbors to be Hellstrip Heroes too.

Plan and plant

You can follow the same process we outline in our post on How to Start a Native Pollinator Garden from Scratch

• Kill what’s there (smother or if you’re impatient like me, dig– see the post for details)
• Select plants appropriate for your conditions (see the post for plant lists)
• Important! Choose plants that will be appropriately sized when mature. Know their spreading height and spreading habits. A small, narrow strip may not be the best place for tall, floppy perennials or trees.
• Plant native plants. They provide habitat and food for wildlife, and after they are established they won’t need supplemental watering
• Plants or seeds? Plants get faster results; seeds are less expensive but require patience. You may not get full results for a couple of years.
• Yes you can plant under existing trees! Unlike turf grass, there are lots of natives that are happy to live in harmony with trees. Look for native woodland plants that suit your conditions.

Care for your little Strip of Heaven

• Weed out unwanted volunteer plants to give your young plants a chance. Soon they will be crowding and shading out the invaders.
• Water well during the first season, until they are established. Next year it shouldn’t be necessary.
• If you choose to use mulch while your plants fill in, make sure to keep it well away from tree trunks and plant stems. Use a natural, undyed mulch. Leaves or compost both work well and will break down over time, providing nutrients and improving the soil.
• Leave some bare ground for insects to overwinter near their host plants.
• Be a good neighbor: As your plants grow, make sure the sidewalk and street/curb edges remain clear and passable.

Once your little patch is established and blooming, you will start to get visits from all kinds of wildlife. It’s fun to keep track of visitors by using an app, such as iNaturalist. Remember that the plants are there to provide habitat and food, so expect to see munched leaves and insects curling up in them. That’s what they are there for!

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Resources

Blog posts

Create a native pollinator garden from scratch, Planning your pollinator garden, Growing native species for pollinators throughout the year
Heavenly Hellstrips from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center

Book

Hellstrip Gardening by Evelyn J Hadden. It’s available to borrow through the Saratoga Springs Public Library and other libraries.

Web articles
New Moon Nursery post
National Wildlife Federation post
Penn State Extension post
Watch a slide show prepared by the Geneseo Master Gardeners

Visit our Pollinator pages for more info on pollinators, native plants, and what you can do to help

The Second Annual Pollinator Palooza, held on June 4, was a great success, getting almost 2500 native plants into the ground in our region and raising thousands of dollars to help Sustainable Saratoga carry out its mission. The Palooza’s success was owed to the hard work and generosity of many individuals. If we forgot to include you in the list below, let us know and we will correct our mistake!

Thank you first and foremost to Brian and Debbie Oligny for letting us use their greenhouse to grow our plants free of charge and then letting us host the Palooza on their beautiful property in Gansevoort. We literally could not have done it without them. They are the best.

                         

Thank you to the Oligny’s neighbor, Jeff Mancini, for letting us use his property as a parking lot. That was a major good deed and a vast improvement over last year’s parking situation.

A huge thank you to Christine Burghart, whose baby this is. She conceived of the event, named it and made it happen. It was thrilling to watch her in action for the second time, aided by her friend and gardening buddy, Johanna Garrison. They are the brains and the inspiration behind the event.

Thank you to the rest of the Palooza planning team: Dianna Goodwin, Julie Holmberg, Wendy Mahaney, Jennifer Michelle, Paul Murphy, Caroline Rothaug and Kelsey Trudell. I wasn’t sure we would pull it off, but we did it!

Thank you to Candice Bergmann for making our social media look so good.

Thank you to the greenhouse volunteers who potted out plants and then watered them daily for nearly six weeks: Chris Burghart, Anne Ernst, Johanna Garrison, Dianna Goodwin, Julie and Art Holmberg, Bethany Khan and daughter, Wendy Mahaney, Sue Taylor and Kelsey Trudell.

Thank you to Adirondack Trust for its generous donation and to Hannaford for providing snacks and drinks.

Thank you to the businesses and individuals who donated items for our raffle: American Beauties Native Plants, Balet Flowers, Booth’s Blend Compost, Caffe Lena, The Children’s Museum at Saratoga, Chris Burghart, Common Roots Brewing Company, Dancing Grain Farm Brewery, Dehn’s Flowers, Eastern Mountain Sports, Featherbed Lane Farm, Harvest2Homes, Eileen Hurley, Impressions of Saratoga, Kayak Shak, Kelsey Lynn Yoga, Lucy’s Bar, Nine Miles East, Quality Hardware, Roosevelt Baths and Spa, Saratoga Olive Oil Company, Spa Cascada, Spoken Boutique, Strand Theater and Wild Things Rescue Nursery.

Big thank you to Jennifer Michelle for soliciting donations for the raffle for the second year in a row. Thanks to Nora Cheek for organizing the raffle displays. And thanks to Nora Cheek, Maja Mahaney, and Mary Jo Salomon for selling the raffle tickets and minding the booths.

A special thanks to Martha Johnson at Slack Hollow Farm for planting and growing out the 500 milkweed seedlings we gave away at the Palooza and at other recent events. Thank you to Janet Britt for helping plant the elusive, fluffy milkweed seeds. Thank you to Megan Di Maio for donating the seeds. And thank you to Noah Savett for donating the coneflower seeds we gave away at the Palooza.

Thank you to the food and beverage truck vendors who showed up to provide sustenance to the hungry crowds: Coach’s Corner, Dancing Grain Farm Brewery, and Sustainable Eats.

Thank you to Capital Region PRISM, Saratoga PLAN, Cornell Cooperative Extension Saratoga County Master Gardeners, SoBro Conservancy of Saratoga, Southern Adirondack Audubon Society, Genoveffa Vitale, Grow Amsterdam NY, The Animal League, and Wild Ones Capital Region for setting up information tables and demonstrations at the Palooza.

A huge and enthusiastic thank you to the Saratoga Springs High School Fiddle Club who entertained us all. Come back next year! And thank you to the numerous high school volunteers who accompanied their teachers Leanne Donelan and Jody Visconti to help out.

Thank you to our Palooza volunteers who prepared for the day, set up the event, directed traffic, staffed the booths, answered questions in the greenhouse, cashiered, kept things flowing, and cleaned up at the end. In alphabetical order they are: Robin Ambrosino, Audrey Belt, Bill Boehmke, Ans Bradford, Chris Burghart, Giana Cammisa, Nora Cheek, Tom Denny, Leanne Donelan, Kathy Dugan, Frank and Kate Edwards, Ellen Egger-Aimone, Anne Ernst, Laura Faulk, Bobbi Fitzgerald, Jill Flaherty, Denis Foley, Art and Julie Holmberg, Johanna Garrison, Dianna Goodwin, Deb Johnson, Gayle Kyler, Lizzie Madison, Jennifer Michelle, Maja and Wendy Mahaney, Alexandra Morgan, Paul Murphy, Kelly Packard, Jack and Lenore Reber, Peyton Reno, Mary Roberts, Caroline Rothaug, Brian Schmitt, Margie Shepard, Jake and Mary Jo Salomon, Dale Tracey, Ben and Kelsey Trudell, and Jody Visconti.

And, finally, a big thank you to all the gardeners who showed up in droves to support our efforts and to give new homes to the plants we grew.  Expand your garden beds and come back next year!   

Thank you!  

The Pollinator Committee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE … “Check Out the Buzzzzz”

Media Contact: Dianna Goodwin, pollinators@sustainablesaratoga.org 

Saratoga Springs, NY – Pollinator Palooza Is Back! Join Sustainable Saratoga on Sunday, June 4th for their second annual native plant sale. New and improved with even more plants, raffle items, displays, food and drink trucks, and better parking! Bring the whole family for a fun-filled day and do your part to help our native pollinators.

What: Pollinator Palooza Native Plant Sale

When: Sunday, June 4, from 10am – 2pm

Where: 390 Wilton-Gansevoort Road, Gansevoort (the former Oligny’s Garden Center)

Parking: Across the street at 393 Wilton-Gansevoort Road (follow signs and parking staff directions)

Event website: https://sustainablesaratoga.org/pollinator-palooza-native-plant-sale/

Native plants for native pollinators: Every garden, no matter how small, has an important role to play in protecting pollinators. Planting native plants is an essential part of creating food and habitat for our native pollinators. However, finding native plants can often be a challenge. The Pollinator Palooza native plant sale makes a variety of native plants available to gardeners in the Saratoga area.

This family-friendly event includes

• Over 30 varieties of native plants for sale
• Information about native plants and pollinators
• Help with gardening questions
• Regional organizations focused on native plants and ecosystems
• Free soil pH testing by Cornell Cooperative Extension (bring about 1/4 cup of dry soil)
• Activities for children
• Raffles to win gift certificates, books, plants, and gift baskets
• New this year: enjoy lunch from food and beer trucks

Visit the event website: https://sustainablesaratoga.org/pollinator-palooza-native-plant-sale/ for more details and the list of plants available for purchase.

About Sustainable Saratoga

Sustainable Saratoga is a not-for-profit organization that promotes sustainable practices and the protection of natural resources through education, advocacy and action, for the benefit of current and future generations in the Saratoga Springs area. Since 2008, Sustainable Saratoga has been a leader in promoting awareness of environmental issues and what we as a local community can do to minimize our ecological impact while maintaining a high quality of life. To learn more about Sustainable Saratoga, visit: https://sustainablesaratoga.org/ 

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

 Contact: Paul Murphy, Chair, Sustainable Saratoga’s Pollinator Committee

email pollinators@sustainablesaratoga.org

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NO MOW MAY: GIVE UP YOUR LAWNMOWER AND GIVE BEES A CHANCE!

SARATOGA SPRINGS JOINS NATIONAL NO MOW MAY MOVEMENT 

SARATOGA SPRINGS, New York – Put your lawnmower aside for the month of May to help save our bees and the planet.

Once again this year, The City of Saratoga Springs is joining with Sustainable Saratoga to launch No Mow May, a national movement to help our highly at risk Pollinators transition from barren winter to Blooming Spring!

Action Plan:  Take No Action!

During the critical month of MAY, Mayor Ron Kim and The City of Saratoga Springs encourage all to keep your mowers at rest and let your lawns go natural in May. This critical transition month allows the Bees, Moths, Butterflies, and all other Pollinators to safely exit their winter ground homes and find nectar nourishment available during May…nectar from beautiful Clover (great nitrogen source for spring lawns), cheerful Dandelions, native lovely violets and the few other Wildflowers that bloom and go to seed in May prior to mowing.

Appleton, Wisconsin was the first U.S. community to adopt No Mow May, in 2020. It proved exceptionally successful in supporting pollinators: No Mow May lawns had 5x as many bees and 3x as many bee species as lawns that were mown, according to scientists in Wisconsin.

“No Mow May is a simple but very effective way that we can help bees and other pollinators, which are facing catastrophic declines due to massive human use of pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change” says Paul Murphy, Chair of The Pollinator Committee for Sustainable Saratoga, which is spearheading No Mow May in Saratoga Springs and the greater Saratoga area. “We are excited to support this excellent effort in Saratoga to help bees and all pollinators, which in turn help our flowers and plants grow. We are delighted that the Saratoga Springs City Council is proclaiming “Saratoga Springs as a NO MOW MAY City!”

We have NO MOW MAY Bee Lawn Signs announcing you’ve signed up to help “Save The Bees”.  Let us know if you want a sign by emailing us at  pollinators@sustainablesaratoga.org . We are requesting a $10 donation to Sustainable Saratoga to cover the cost of the sign. These signs can be re-used each May for at least 10 years.