This planting season, go wild to help pollinators
Spring is here, which means it’s time to start planning your spring garden. Before heading off to the commercial garden centre to pick up flowers at a premium price, consider planting a pollinator-friendly native flower garden instead.
Using native flowers in your garden saves you money, while also providing critical habitat for the numerous native bees, butterflies and other wonderful insects that Ontario has to offer. Native Ontario flowers have evolved to thrive in our specific climate. This means that they do well on our natural amounts of precipitation, so they require much less watering or irrigation than exotic species. This saves you money on water and prevents wasting water resources in the hot summer months.
Additionally, if you choose perennial plant species, you will only have to plant them once and they will keep coming back every year, saving you even more money.
There are even some resources to get native seeds for free, that means you can plant them for free and they will require much less water or maintenance overall and then as an added bonus, if you chose a perennial species, they will come back next year, too! Why not appreciate Ontario’s natural beauty while saving money in the short and long-term?
Many native pollinator species in Ontario are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, mainly driven by our ever-increasing human population. This habitat loss disrupts the ability of insect pollinators, like bees and butterflies, to access food and nesting resources. The loss of pollinators negatively impacts our whole ecosystem, because native pollinators have evolved specialized pollinating relationships with native plant species. Furthermore, other animals in our ecosystem depend on these native plants for their own food resources and habitat. Globally, 90 per cent of flowering plants depend on pollinators for survival.
The Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library offers free seeds that can be delivered to your doorstep. They provide seeds that are native to Ontario and Quebec, and they also have numerous resources explaining how to plan out your wildflower garden to have the most success and attract the native pollinators you want. In return, once your flowers have grown, you can donate their seeds back to the library and keep the cycle going.
You can check out the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library at wildflowerseedlibrary.ca.
If you’re looking for an option closer to home, the Royal Botanical Gardens also offer a free seed library. However, make sure to note whether the seeds are native to Ontario when selecting your seeds by checking for the “N” or “NN” designation on the fact sheet. Information on the RBG seed library can be found here: bit.ly/36cyHi2.