Celebrate National Pollinator week, June 17-23, by planting a pollinator garden!
Why we need pollinators? Somewhere between 75% and 95% of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination – they need pollinators. Pollinators provide pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops. That means that 1 out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators.
Pollinators add 217 billion dollars to the global economy and honey bees alone are responsible for between 1.2 and 5.4 billion dollars in agricultural productivity in the United States. In addition to the food that we eat, pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife.
Tips for creating a pollinator garden:
- Plants that provide nectar and pollen sources – flowers
- Provide a water source
- Situate the garden in sunny areas with wind breaks
- Create large “pollinator targets” of native or non-invasive plants
- Establish continuous bloom throughout the growing season
- Eliminate or minimize the impact of pesticides
Once you have established your pollinator garden, be sure to register it at: pollinator.org/mpgcmap/register
Article by Jane Villa-Lobos
This year The Garden Club at Palm Coast installed a display at the Palm Coast Public Library with posters of local gardeners who were selected this Spring as Selection of the Month for their beautiful curb appeal gardens and outstanding landscapes. Examples of gardening books are also on display which can be signed out.
Ruth Van De Weert of Point Pleasant Drive has been recognized as June 2019 Selection of the Month by The Garden Club at Palm Coast. She and her late husband, Cornelius, bought the three Lots in 1982, built the house in 1986, rented it out until they moved from New York to Palm Coast in 2014. They had lived on a dairy farm and planted many of the plants and trees prior to moving in while visiting family in Florida. The have a plaque on the stone windmills with their farm name of Laroedale Farm.