How to help feed our pollinator friends

Picture the perfect summer picnic. The table is overloaded with colorful choices of yummy treats. You walk around the table a few times and enjoy sampling the choices.

Pollinators that visit your garden are looking for the same things. Birds, bats, bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, beetles, flies and other small mammals that pollinate plants bring us one out of three bites of food. They also help sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants to reproduce.

A pollinator is anything that helps carry pollen from the male part of the flower, called the stamen, to the female part of the same or another flower, the stigma. This movement of pollen needs to occur for the plant to become fertilized and produce seeds, fruits and young plants. Some plants are self-pollinating, and others may be fertilized by pollen carried by wind or water.

Intentional and not

Some pollinators, including many bee species, intentionally collect pollen. Others, like butterflies and birds, accidentally move the pollen as pollen sticks to their bodies while drinking or feeding on nectar in the flower blooms. Then, as they travel from flower to flower, they unknowingly transport the pollen, resulting in pollination.

Pollinator populations are in decline due to a loss in feeding and nesting habitats, climate change and the misuse of chemicals.

We are all familiar with the plight of the monarch butterflies. In 2019, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to list four species of California bumblebee under the California Endangered Species Act, including the western bumblebee, Crotch’s bumblebee, Franklin’s bumblebee and the suckley cuckoo bumblebee. Pollinators need our help now more than ever.

One way to add more pollinator habitats is to consider replacing or reducing your conventional lawn area. There are pollinator-sustaining plant choices for most garden conditions. While most pollinator-supportive plants do best in full sun, many varieties will do well in half-sun spots in the garden. Try zinnias, bright lights cosmos, sulfur cosmos, clarkia, prairie aster and penstemon. Some pollinator-supportive plants will even thrive in the shade, for example, Mexican pitcher sage or calamintha.

If you’re looking for drought-tolerant, low-water-use plants that are attractive to pollinators, try coyote mint, agastache, lupine, phacelia, gaillardia, tidytips or red buckwheat.

Milkweed and more

The Marin Master Gardeners support efforts to bring an amazing pollinator picnic to your garden. The MMG Pollinator Grow Team has seeded 35 varieties of pollinator-sustaining plants. Some are natives, and others are non-native species. They are growing a few herbs and have also seeded Asclepias fascicularis, a narrow-leaf milkweed.

Milkweeds are the larval host plants for monarch butterflies, and this species is probably the most critical host plant for monarch butterflies in California. Milkweed gardeners need to be prepared for the plant to be eaten by monarch caterpillars, but the presence of beautiful monarch butterflies will reward them.

If you’re looking to add pollinators to your garden, stop by MMG’s Pollinator Plant Sale on March 4 at the Falkirk Greenhouse in San Rafael, where they were grown. The plants for sale do well in Marin gardens and have been selected to provide a year-round food source for pollinators.

Details: The sale is from 9 a.m. to noon March 4 at the Falkirk Greenhouse at 1408 Mission Ave. in San Rafael. Plants will be sold in 4-inch pots for $5 each. Cash or checks only. Plan in advance by looking at the plant list at plantmaster.com/presents/plants.php?id=63967d79e1e27.

Sponsored by UC Cooperative Extension, the University of California Marin Master Gardeners provides science- and research-based information for Marin home gardeners.  Email questions to helpdesk@marinmg.org. Attach photos for inquiries about plant pests or diseases. Please call 415-473-4910 to see when a master gardener will be at the office or drop off samples 24/7 in the sample box outside the office. To attend a gardening workshop or subscribe to Leaflet, a free quarterly e-newsletter, go to marinmg.ucanr.edu.