by Ty Fischer, Freshwater Health Coordinator
Certain environmental actions that we can take have much more profound impacts than we might realize, stretching far beyond the immediate spatial or temporal scale to touch entire communities.
Creating a wildflower garden is the perfect example of such an action. With just a few hours of work, almost anyone can create a space that directly supports a special type of insect and animal relied upon by most of the plant kingdom to reproduce: pollinators.
Pollinators, which include species of bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, bats, and beetles, are responsible for the reproduction of 65% of the world’s plants (Wratten et al., 2012). Pollinators are also vital for us as humans, allowing the proliferation of 75% of plants cultivated around the world for food, medicines, condiments, spices, and fabric that we rely on every day (Das et al., 2018).
Wildflower gardens serve as critical stopping points for these hardworking animals. The nectar they collect from the flowers in the gardens provides energy to them, and the shelter they take amongst the flowers affords them the chance to rest throughout their journeys. Overall, wildflower gardens connect habitat throughout a space once fragmented by human activity, thereby supporting their populations and allowing pollinators to do their important work.
The need to help sustain pollinator populations grows with each passing day. In recent years, there have been substantial declines in the abundance and diversity of insect pollinators due to climate change, pesticide use, the spread of pathogens and parasites, and the destruction and fragmentation of their habitat. In fact, the loss of flower-rich plant communities has specifically been attributed to these declines in pollinator populations (Wratten et al., 2012).
Almost every greenspace and shoreline holds the potential to reestablish some of the flower-rich habitat once lost, a crucial step in not only helping pollinator populations survive, but thrive. With the right selection of plants suited specifically to your local conditions, you can also be sure that your stunning wildflower garden will come to life every spring with little maintenance – all you need to do is to set the groundwork.
If you are located in Saskatchewan, we have the perfect tool to help you with this! The newly released Saskatchewan Wildflower Garden Guide has everything you need to know when starting out on a garden project in Saskatchewan. You will learn how to build your garden from the ground up, including choosing the location, acquiring your plants, preparing the bed, planting the flowers, and maintaining them throughout the years. Watersheds Canada also has an Ontario Wildflower Garden Guide available (Manitoba’s guide is next and is coming soon!).
The guide includes a list of some popular, attractive, and hardy native wildflowers that are guaranteed to thrive in Saskatchewan’s climate, with in-depth descriptions of each. Combined with The Natural Edge’s free Canada-wide Native Plant Database, in which you can input your site-specific factors like light availability and soil moisture to find plants that match your conditions, you can ensure that your garden will stand the test of time and create the maximum benefit for you and for native pollinators.
Not in a position to plant a native wildflower garden? You can also help Canada’s polliantors by making symbolically adopting a Wild Bergamot, Wild Columbine, or Great Camas. Each symbolic adoption includes comes with a beautiful blank honour card for you to personalize and give as a gift. Each gift also includes a 5″x7″ postcard featuring different works of art by a Canadian nature artist that corresponds to the gift you selected. Canadian tax receipts are available for donations of over $25.
All in all, much like this symbiotic relationship between pollinator and flower, building a wildflower garden is a mutually beneficial endeavour. The mosaic of colour and texture brings endless joy to you and to passerby, and these areas will help these little pollinator heroes continue to do their important work in the years to come.
Sources
Das A., Sau S., Pandit M.K., Saha K (2018). A review on: Importance of pollinators in fruit and vegetable production and their collateral jeopardy from agro-chemicals. Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies, 6(4): 1586-1591. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18277.24807
Wratten, S. D., Gillespie, M., Decourtye, A., Mader, E., & Desneux, N. (2012). Pollinator habitat enhancement: Benefits to other ecosystem services. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 159, 112–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2012.06.020