Tag Archives: Native plants

Best plants for honey bees include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme.

Sharon Garden Club Hosts Beekeeper Barbara MacPhee’s “Gardens for Honeybees”

Best plants for honey bees include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme.

Plant These For Bees, a display at the Sharon Garden Club by guest speaker and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee. Suggested flowers for pollinators include anise hyssop, rosemary, poppy, bee balm, catmint, coneflower, borage, and thyme. [Photo by Dixie Buckland]

Beekeeper Barbara MacPhee

Sharon Garden Club presenter and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun honey bee facts from Sharon Garden Club presenter and beekeeper Barbara MacPhee, at our February meeting:

  • Among honey bees, it’s the worker bees (who are all females) that you see (and hear) collecting nectar and pollen. The males, called drones, maintain the hives.
  • It takes 1,152 honey bees flying a distance of 112,000 miles, harvesting from 4.5 million flowers, to produce one pound of honey. Now that is impressive, ladies!
  • In early spring, bees need early-flowering plants like snowdrops, Claytonia and dandelions to support their hives. Forsythia, while a traditional feel-good sign of spring for humans, has zero pollen and zero nectar. Consider replacing one with a pollinator-friendly native shrub like redbud or viburnum.
  • Later in the season, agastache, clover (yes, in your lawn!) and borage, plus winterberry and American holly, are some of the other plants that honey bees favor.

And my two cents: Think about it: just about everything you and I eat was once a plant, most likely a flowering plant. No pollinators, no food. Are you hungry to support pollinators now?

Visit the Sharon Garden Club online

 

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How to Keep Your Garden Plants Alive in Winter in a Drought

MA drought map showing more than one third of the state in extreme drought condition

MA drought map updated December 13, 2016.  The area in red, about one third of the state, is in an Extreme Drought condition.

What do you do keep your drought-stressed plants alive this winter?  It’s hard to put a Band-Aid on drought-stressed plants, but here are some things you can do:

  • KEEP WATERING UNTIL THE GROUND FREEZES IN THE FALL/EARLY WINTER.  Check with your city or town to see if even now, in late December, there’s a current watering ban.  Especially with new plantings, and also with drought-stressed ones, you generally want to give them the equivalent of one inch of water per week all the way until the ground freezes.  If time or water is limited, focus on watering your most valuable plants, such as trees and shrubs.
  • IMPROVE YOUR SOIL.  On your lawn for instance, just 1/4 inch of compost every fall makes a huge difference in the resilience of your turf plants.  For your planting beds, pull back the mulch, spread 1/2 inch of compost or leaf mold,  scratch it into the soil surface, and put the mulch back in place.  This will increase the soil’s ability to hold moisture and make nutrients more available to the roots of your plants.  Think in terms of feeding your soil (the soil food web), not feeding your plants.
  • MULCH.  It’s not to late to apply 2-3 inches of mulch to all areas of exposed soil.  Do not let mulch come in contact with the trunks of your trees and shrubs, where it transitions into the root.  This area is called the root flare and should never be covered.  If you see a mulch volcano around the base of a tree, the mulch is suffocating the tree, which stresses it, makes it vulnerable to pests and pathogens, and puts the tree on a path of decline.  About the best mulch of all is fallen leaves that you’ve chopped up with your lawn mower and spread on your beds.  Speaking of chopped leaves, you can also pile them up, adding water to create a water film on most of the leaf surface area, and let them sit for a year or two.  The result, called leaf mold, is another source of organic matter that will make your plants sing.
  • PLANT NATIVES.  Many people picture native plants as being weedy and leggy.  In fact, native plants are best adapted to not only survive, but thrive in the existing environmental conditions.  Test your soil and know how much sun your planting site gets.  Then, it’s easy to select plants that should do quite well with minimum inputs, once established.

For more info about the drought status in MA, visit http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?MA

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Reclaim the perimeter of your yard

Carol removes a stump after clearing the perimeter of a client's

Carol removes a stump after clearing a tangle of exotic invasive plants on the sloped perimeter of a client’s lawn in Sharon, MA.

Trees and shrubs, vines and weeds getting the best of the perimeter of your yard?  Reclaim it!  That’s what I did for a client in Sharon, MA, They were getting ready to sell their house, and I wanted to leverage their back yard with an expansive view to a trio of established but hidden ash trees on the edge of the property.  So I cut down a few small trees and hacked out their roots, removed lots of exotic invasive plants like multi flora rose, Asian bittersweet and garlic mustard…though the knot weed is still a work in progress.

Carol with a tree stump she removed for curb appeal in Sharon, MA.

Carol didn’t let this stump stump her. Her reciprocating saw and pry bar and patience did the trick. She did this to open the view to the large trees in the background.  It’s hard to see, but behind the iris is a native Viburnum shrub that had been hidden by overgrowth.

 

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Join me at Sharon Green Day May 7th 12-4 pm

Enjoy a free, fun-filled, family oriented afternoon, and discover how you can make a difference for the next generation!

Pollinator garden favorite black eyed Susan

Black eyed Susan, Rudbeckia fulgida, is an excellent native pollinator and butterfly garden plant.

If you want to support pollinators, come find my table at the Sustainable Sharon Coalition’s Green Day on May 7th from 12-4 on High Street, Sharon Center, between the Sharon Public Library & Congregational Church.  I’ll be selling perennials with high horticulture and pollinator value, and Rudbeckia fulgida v fulgida will be the star of the show.
(In case of inclement weather, the event will be held inside the Congregational Church Parish Hall.)

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Take the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge

Here’s a challenge from the National Wildlife Federation.  If this matters to you, Garden-911 can help you get certified.

MPGC_Logo_219X219You can participate the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge by turning your yard or garden into a Certified Wildlife Habitat via National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program.  It’s as simple as providing food, water, cover and places to raise young for pollinators like bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Then visit our website to certify your yard.

When you certify, you’ll get a personalized certificate, a special garden flag designating your yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat, a one-year membership to National Wildlife Federation, six digital issues of National Wildlife magazine, a subscription to the monthly Garden for Wildlife e-newsletter, and a discount on wildlife gardening products from National Wildlife Catalog.

Most importantly, you’ll also start attracting beautiful pollinators and get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re making a difference. Each Certified Wildlife Habitat counts towards the ultimate goal of creating one million pollinator-friendly gardens by the end of 2016.

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