Make Way for Pollinators, January 2023
Welcome
While we might be still in depths of winter, for every gardener spring is just a seed catalog or dreamy design book away. We are excited to begin preparations for our upcoming Plants for Pollinators Online Sale along with our many community partners. This year, our online sale will kick off at 1:30pm, Monday April 3rd and run through close of business on Friday, April 28th. Pick up from the various locations around the watershed will occur on the weekend of May 6th. We are excited to expand our sale again this year and will be selling more than twenty-five thousand deep rooted landscape plugs of thirty five (count ‘em) different native perennial species.
2022 Native Plant Sale Hats. New design coming for 2023!
These plants have been carefully selected for their ability to thrive with minimal care, attract pollinators, and to grow well in a variety of conditions around the yard from dry shade to the strip between sidewalk and road commonly known as the hell strip! We have worked hard to respond to the feedback from last years sale, expanding the number and type of plants for tough conditions, expanding our speaker series, and adding extra capacity on our website. This year will be noting deer resistance, and the good behavior or spreadiness of plants to help you select the perfect plant for the perfect location. We are also updating our resources on the website and reorganizing things a bit, so you will be able to find helpful information and navigate to those all-important planning articles more easily. Finally, we will again have fabulous pollinator hats and garden signs for sale to publicize the good work of making way for pollinators and allow you to share the good new with your friends and neighbors! Take a sneak peak at our Native Plant Sale Home Page for the plants, as well as the kits, to be sold in 2023 and see our line up of fascinating speakers. The first, Desiree Narango will kick off the series on January 17, so register today to be a part of the pollinator fun.
Reminder As To WHY Plants for Pollinators
Why we need native plants
Native plants provide necessary habitat to sustain populations of native insects, birds, and other wildlife. The more native flowers, shrubs, and trees in our landscape, the more the local wildlife that evolved with these plants will thrive. Research has shown that when a landscape has too few native plants, the population of many species seriously declines. Even though some non-native plants may look like similarly named native cousins and may offer flower nectar and other services, they fail to adequately support native wildlife. Please help build out Pollinator Pathways and recruit your neighbors and community to join. EVERY native plant pollinator garden contributes insect and bird habitat connecting across yards, neighborhoods, parks and regions! If you are needing some guidance on where to start, our helpful resources page is packed with good ideas, such as how to prepare your site for native plants. (Hint: it is never too early, or too late to start.) There are detailed planting designs, link to learn more about native plants and their invasive bad guy cousins, and also what you can do year round for pollinators of all stripes and types. Check out Garden Resources and Plant Sale FAQs for lots of helpful information.
Our Pollinator Webinar Series
We will again help gardeners and would be gardeners build their knowledge and prepare for the plant sale by hosting a series of four webinars monthly, starting on January 17 and ending with the plant sale opening on April 3rd.
Our webinars focus on native plants and the essential role a variety of pollinators play in the ecosystem and help us to understand the complex web of life existing in our yards and local habitats. We are excited to have secured nationally acclaimed subject matter experts to lead each one-hour webinar. Three out of four of the talks will also be recorded and links to the talks will be sent to registered participants after the talk is over, so don’t hesitate to sign up!
CLICK HERE to Register to Attend All 4 Programs At Once.
While the webinars are offered for free, there are substantial costs associated with hosting speakers and running the plant sale. We ask that you consider a $5-10 donation added at checkout, to help GSWA offset the cost of bringing these great and impactful webinars. By attending all the talks in this series, you will really build your knowledge about different groups of pollinators and how to support them throughout the year, beyond just planting our fabulous native plugs. We have even made it easy to sign up for all four talks at once on the Native Pollinator Plant Webinar Series registration page. Individual plant webinars and their full descriptions are available on our Events page or by calling 973-538-3500.
January 17, 7-8 PM – Native Plants for Native Wildlife: Key Steps Toward Cultivating Biodiversity Conservation in our Gardens. Speaker: Desiree Narango, Conservation Scientist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. Desiree is a Conservation Scientist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. She will speak on the fascinating complexity of plant-animal interactions and help us understand the breadth of research which shows how native plants, and the pollinators and insects that feed upon them, are the foundation for cultivating food webs and encouraging biodiversity in our yards, patios, school grounds, and other privately managed green spaces. She will present an easy-to-understand summary of the scientific facts and logic behind the guideline that 70% native plants biomass is a minimum threshold for sustainable bird populations. (She’s also the researcher on all that great and famous chickadee work…IYKYK) You’ll leave knowing more about the ‘why’ native plants are crucial to sustaining biodiversity, and specific plant species that are important for supporting specialist pollinators and songbirds.
Looking Ahead:
February 21, 7-8 PM – Wasps: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect. Speaker: Eric Eaton, Acclaimed writer and entomologist specializing in Hymenoptera (a large order of insects, comprising over 150,000 living species of sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants)
March 21, 7-8 PM – What’s the Buzz About Native Bees? Speaker: Heather Holm, biologist, pollinator conservationist, and award-winning author. ATTEND LIVE ONLY- no zoom recording.
April 3, 12-1 PM – Native Plant Sale Product Overview. Speaker: Hazel England, GSWA Director of Education, Outreach, and Land Stewardship.
Our Plants and Kits
This year we have created six kits—comprised of plants that work well together, bloom across the season and provide pollinators both food and nectar through the seasons, we will also be selling these species as standalones and also have some other favorites only available as standalone species. Check out the Native Plant Sale Catalog on our website for more information.
Dry Shade Kit: Does best in part-shade to shade and dry to average soils. Comprised of five plugs each Coral Bells, Curly Wood Sedge, Stonecrop, White Wood aster, Wreath Goldenrod
Red, White and Blues Kit: Sun-loving, performs best in full sun and average to moist soils. Comprised of 5 plugs each of: Culvers Root, Scarlet Beebalm, Shining Blue Star, Showy Goldenrod, Side oats Gramma.
Pink, Purple, and Yellows Kit: Sun-loving, performs best in full sun and average to moist soils. Comprised of 5 plugs each of: Anise Hyssop, Blunt Mountain Mint, Lanceleaf Coreopsis, New England Aster, Swamp Milkweed.
Sidewalk/Container Kit: Perfect for hell strips, containers, or any location with difficult growing conditions. Performs well in full sun and dry soils but thrives in all sunny conditions. Comprised of 5 plugs of: Black-Eyed Susan, Butterfly Weed, Lyre leaf Sage, and Purple Lovegrass; along with 4 plugs of Pussytoes.
Best-behaved Kit: Lower-growing, less spreading plants great for more formal gardens. Sun-loving, performs best in full sun and average to moist soils. Comprised of 5 plugs each of: Anise Hyssop, Blunt Mountain Mint, Lanceleaf Coreopsis, New England Aster, Swamp Milkweed.
Rain Basin Kit: Wet-loving plants that thrive in wet areas. Can be combined with any of the sun-loving kits for rain gardens. Comprised of 5 plugs each of: Blue Flag Iris, Cardinal Flower, Eastern Star Sedge, Spotted Joe Pye, White Turtlehead.
