Our beautiful wild pollinators need help! Support bees, butterflies and other pollinators by converting your lawn into a meadowscape or let your lawn grow wild!

1. Artur Rydzewski, Flickr
Make your garden a
bee sanctuary

2. From the very beginning of the world,
the other species were a lifeboat for the people.
Now, we must be theirs.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
coniferconifer, Flickr

3. When you look at dandelions, what do you see?
Weeds to be eliminated?
Evi Bauman, Flickr

4. How about mullein? Another weed to get rid of?

5. Or plants with many gifts: nectar for bees, seeds
for birds, food or medicine for humans

6. When you look at at stump, what do you see?
Debris for the city to pick up?

7. Or a home for many pollinators?
Eastern Commas, Question Marks and Mourning Cloaks survive the cold northern winter
as adults, often taking shelter in a woodpile or underneath loose bark
Michael.PortrayingLife.com, Flickr

8. Bumblebees build burrows underneath stumps
scattered throughout my garden

9. The birds like them too!

10. When you see dead plant stems, what do you see?
Debris to be cleaned up?

11. Or bee nesting sites?

12. When you look at unraked leaves, what do you
see? A mess to rake up?
Steven Severinghaus, Flickr

13. Or winter homes for bees and next summer’s
butterflies, moths and bees?
Luna moths hibernating in rolled up fallen leaves
Luna Moth, David Britton

14. When you look at holey leaves, what do you see?
An insect ‘problem’ to deal with?
Izabelle Acheson, Unsplash

15. Tom Murray, Flickr
Or a sign that your plants have attracted one of
many species of caterpillars?
Chickadees need 6000-9000 caterpillars to feed just one brood

16. When something is munching on your plants, they’re
contributing to the food web
quercus, betula, prunus, populus and salix family attract the most species
Larry Reis, Flickr

17. OrDo you try and cover all the bare soil in your
garden with mulch or plants?
Thomas Berger

18. Do you worry about how to ‘fix’ the holes in a
patchy area of your lawn?
F. William Ravlin

19. Or invite in ground nesting bees & wasps by
deliberately creating bare patches?
F. William Ravlin

20. We’ve been taught to think in static classes: bug,
tree, flower, chickadee

21. But it’s the interactions and relationships that count. The tree
captures sunlight, the insect chomps the leaves, the bird eats
the bug, and all this makes nutrients and energy cycle around
vigorously, creating niches, diversity, habitat, and opportunities.
~Thomas Christopher, The New American Landscape

23. Insects are our most important pollinators
Barry Cottam

24. treegoal, Flickr
Meet some bees
Canada over 850 species of native bees
8 wild bee species are listed as at risk
¾ of food crops, including tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers rely on insect pollination
squash is pollinated by the squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa)

25. Squash bees collect only cucurbit pollen grains; bumblebees
pollinate legumes; sweat bees prefer strawberries & blueberries;
mason bees help assure a good harvest of many fruit trees
Illustration By Elayne Sears, Mother Earth News

26. Tiny sweat bees pollinate smaller flowered native
plants
henry jurenka, Flickr

27. Bumblebees pollinate early flowering plants like
haskaps
YkGardener, Flickr

28. Blue orchard mason bees pollinate many fruits
(plums cherries, pears, apples, blueberries)
Natalie Boyle/USDA

29. Mason bees are “the new frontier” for crop
pollination
Blake C. Wilson, Flickr

30. Blue-winged wasps attach eggs to grubs, often
Japanese beetles
Blake C. Wilson, Flickr

31. Osmia conjuncta, a mining bee, builds nests in
shells
@russell_vivianOsmia bicolor John Walters, BBC

33. Dmitry Grigoriev, Unsplash
Think like a bee

34. Is there something to eat? Top plants for supporting
pollen specialist bees

35. @Donna_Dean
Is there a place to nest? Rocks, dead wood, leaves,
bare soil, bee houses, hollow stems, shells

36. Is there a place to drink?

38. Wilder lawns
diverse polycultures support life
Image: Gracia Lam

39. When you look at a ‘weedy’ ‘overgrown’ lawn, what
do you see?

40. For pollinators, the typical lawn is a green desert
Hero Yama, Flickr

41. Green Abundance by Design
Pollinators want a variety of plant heights & flower
sizes, bare soil for nests & diverse native flowers,
grasses, shrubs & flowering trees

42. If there is a lawn, they like it on the taller side with
flowers & ‘weeds’
Hero Yama, Flickr

43. Sow flower seeds into your lawn
clover, wild strawberry, barren strawberry & self-heal, dwarf cinquefoil, daisies,
bugleweed, ground plum, barren strawberry

44. Mow less, fertilize less & water less to encourage
native plants to move into your lawn
wild strawberries, wild blue violets, trout lilies

45. What seeds are lying dormant? Try making space
to see if the native seed bank will recover
Photo by Clay and LimestoneImage Larry Weaner & Associates

46. The big shift
...in horticulture over the next decade is a shift from thinking about plants as individual
objects to thinking about plants as social networks--that is, communities of compatible
[beings] interwoven in dense mosaics.
~Thomas Rainer
Photo by Saxon Holt, PhotoBotanic.com

47. Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Designing plant communities using layers

48. Replace mulch with layered plant communities

49. Green Abundance by Design
A series of eruptions or localized uprising is a better way of
thinking about it, rather than a uniform, homogeneous layer.
~Nigel Dunnett

50. structural layer
Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Designing plant communities using layers

51. Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Designing plant communities using layers

52. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

53. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

54. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

55. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

56. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

57. Less weeds, more wow, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

59. Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Designing plant communities using layers

60. 5-7 plants
short mix (sedges & low grasses
legible layers
tidier (designed) look
less diversity = less pollinators
large diversity
tall mix
mingled layers
wilder (messy) look
more diversity = more pollinators

61. Greenworks

62. City of Vaughan
“Aesthetic of wild, naturalized boulevard gardens
will help to create a distinct character and identity”

65. Green Abundance by Design Plant Matrix

67. Parking lot at Botanical Research Institute of Texas, Fort Worth, photo by Karl Thibodeaux
Invite conversation
“Be brave with your invitations. They bring people together.”
~Charles Vogl

68. “We started to view seeds as tiny time-travelers.”
~Lawn Redisturbance Laboratory

69. Sally-ann Spence, minibeastmayhem

70. Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates garden in Austin

71. Kathy Keatley Garvey

72. Lydia Liu, Flickr

73. Jill Mead/The Guardian and Handout

74. That gifts that were being offered was evident in the general hum and flutter of
insect life. The meadow was audible with bees and crickets; the mowed grass was
silent. The meadow waved and nodded in the wind; crowds of leafhoppers leapt to
the brush of a hand. The lawn was deadly still.
~Sara Stein, Noah’s Garden
Photo by Claire Takacs of a Larry Weaner garden

75. “The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.”
~Elizabeth Lawrence, A Southern Garden
joyce_hostyn@yahoo.com
rideau1000islandsmastergardeners.com
MGRTIcoordinator@gmail.com
Bonnie Kittle, Unsplash

76. A Flower Patch for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat
Gardens for Native Pollinators in the Greater Toronto Area
~Friends of the Earth Canada

77. Bees of Toronto, City of Toronto Biodiversity Series
Best native plants for Toronto gardens, David Suzuki Foundationi
Meadowscaping Handbook, West Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District
Native plants for pollinators, Credit Valley Conservation
Prairie and meadow plants for landscaping, Credit Valley Conservation
Selecting plants for pollinators, Manitoulin–Lake Simcoe ecoregion
Timothy Dykes ,Unsplash