While ten years has gone by in the flash of warbler’s wings, I have been planting for pollinators for about that time. But you know what? I am not entirely sure I could explain exactly what it means. Pollination. Planting for it.
My 9th grader asked this weekend, “What’s a liberal arts school?” I graduated from one. But could I give her a honest and true explanation? No. Not entirely anyway. It’s this. And it’s that. And it’s…
Likewise, what does planting for pollinators even mean? I have had a “pollinator garden” in my yard as they are called. But over the past ten years I have noticed that I am still putting together pieces of the puzzle with each and every day I spend outside. I “feel” like I know what it means. Could I write an essay and describe the nuts and bolts of it? Not sure.
It was only a few weeks ago that I learned the relationship between the violets in the rain garden in spring, and the great spangled frittilary butterfly in the meadow in June.
It took me years to understand that it means shrubs. It means trees. It means something is happening at eye level and also over your head, in a canopy you never think to look up into. It means overwintering and unseen.
It means food for caterpillars. Not just the adults sipping nectar, but the larval stage nobody photographs, the stage that’s actually chewing holes in a leaf somewhere, which is the entire point, even though every instinct in me for years said holes in a leaf meant something is wrong. Nothing was wrong. Something was working.
It means blooms that overlap all season instead of one glorious performance in June and then nothing. It means thinking of your garden as a symphony. Not as a one hit wonder.
It means leaving the mess standing over winter — the stems, the seed heads, the leaf litter I used to clear away every fall like it was a chore I owed the yard. The leaves are part of that symphony. It’s all part of the program. But that description? It’s too long to fit in the phrase “planting for pollinators.”
And that’s what no one told me when I first started doing this. Somewhere in this winter scene in the rain garden…there’s an overwintering caterpillar? No one told me that would happen. But it did.
Today’s Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly in the garden was enough to channel this essay, and it might be enough to fuel my next podcast too.
I am not sure what it is about butterflies. But I absolutely feel a rush of excitement every time I see one.
A few days ago, I was miraculously close to monarch butterfly. And I actually heard the sound of their wings when he flew over my head. It was something I was not expecting. You would think they don’t make a morsel of sound. But they do. And it was something I am truly grateful to have learned all on my own.
And do I have lantana (in a pot) because it’s a beautiful flower that reminds me of childhood times in Florida? Yes. I do. Is in native to my area? No. But the milkweed I have all over the garden is. So having a monarch up close on the deck? Sheer magic…
Thanks for reading, and maybe I will take a little deeper dive into pollination on the next podcast…..
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