The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening; Attract and Support Bees, Beetles, Butterflies, Bats, and Other Pollinators by Kim Eierman

Give pollinators a fighting chance! Transform your landscape into a breathtaking pollinator paradise with the practical solutions in this New York Times–featured guide. The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. In The Pollinator Victory Garden, environmental horticulturalist, landscape designer, and New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden teacher Kim Eierman offers accessible, actionable information and tips for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With Read more

From the Publisher The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening Introduction Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. But many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. I wrote this book to help you change that. You can create a beautiful landscape that attracts and supports many different species of pollinators. Essentials of Pollinators and Pollination Pollination is something we take for granted, but it’s essential to life on Earth. It is the means by which most flowering plants reproduce. As you’ll recall from biology class, pollination involves the physical movement of pollen from the male part of a plant to the female part of a plant. Without pollination, a plant can’t be fertilized so that seeds can form. Providing Pollinators with a Place to Live Habitat is a term that frequently appears when pollinators are being discussed. But what is habitat? Simply put, habitat is the natural environment where an organism, in this case a pollinator, lives, and where it can find the resources it needs: food, shelter, resting places, and safe places to mate and reproduce. Habitat includes more than flowers. Providing Pollinators with Food to Eat Habitat consists of a place for pollinators to live as well as a place for them to eat and get the nutrition they need to flourish. These habitats may be the same, can be overlapping, or may be more disconnected as is the case for honey bees, which will fly several miles, if necessary, to obtain food. In managed landscapes, the place to live and the place to eat (both habitats) should overlap and are equally important. In most cases, you can provide pollinators with both a place to live and a place to eat in the same general area. Parade of Pollinators Animals that pollinate flowers include creatures that are very familiar, such as bumble bees and honey bees, as well as less obvious animals. There are pollinating beetles, bats, butterflies, moths, lizards, rodents, lemurs, honey possums, and even monkeys. Not every species within a group of animals is a pollinator. Approximately 9 percent of all birds and mammals on Earth are pollinators. One of the most unusual mammal pollinators is the lemur, which is the largest pollinator in the world. Creating and Growing a Pollinator Victory Garden A Pollinator Victory Garden can take many forms. The size and conditions of your landscape, your available time, and your budget will be the major factors determining the type of garden you create. If you have an existing flower garden, you might start simply by tweaking that space to include more pollinator plants and nesting habitat. But if you want to really devote your landscape to supporting pollinators, more detailed updates may be in order.