The Buzz On Native Plants

This program was funded in part by The Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund (birds chirping) (background chatter) So the area that we're in here in this, upper garden.

So the area that we're in here in this, upper garden.

this previously was again, it was like new construction, and it was a fluffy loam with grass.

and as a land trust, we look at ways that we can make people excited and comfortable to get outside.

So we felt that doing native plants, things that maybe people have in their own backyard here in Downeast Maine, or things that people would see out on our hiking trails, would be a great way to get people excited to explore this property, as well as our other properties.

Frenchman Bay Conservancy, we are a land trust here in eastern Hancock County.

we have, been around since 1987.

And in 2017, we acquired this property here on Tidal Falls Road.

And Hancock renovated what was previously a private home.

and during that renovation, a lot of work was done here to the ground, around our offices.

It led us to what essentially looks like new construction, and what we found was that we're on an a hill here on Tidal Falls Road, and we are experiencing a lot of flooding, erosion, a lot of, ground water coming down the hill.

So we needed to find a solution to deal with those water problems.

And that led us to start looking into what we could do with native plants.

We had, contractors come in and reshape the ground that would be conducive to building gardens.

We worked with nature, nurture, landscape design and the native gardens of Blue Hill to help us design this landscape.

They took a list of species that we provided them, that we have available on our properties, and used that to create gardens that were appropriate to the different spaces of the property that we have here at Title Falls.

We built in rain gardens that really are designed to flood the part of the property that we're on here.

This is at, the bottom of the hill that we're on and sees the most runoff.

So these gardens here are made to absorb that water that comes off of the hill, stops it from moving further onto the property, but also supports all the plants that are here in this part of the garden.

We have seen really a monumental change in the erosion.

We've had parts of the parts of the property at the back side of the property that had significant damage, because of the ongoing erosion.

we have had some hardscaping and ground work done to deal with that.

But combined with what we've done here in the garden, it's really a remarkable change.

So this is something we're excited to show people that, you know, here in coastal Maine, climate change is a concern.

Rising sea waters are a concern for those of us who have properties on the coast.

So working with a native plant, such a great solution to dealing with those issues of, rising waters and flooding.

You know, and we've also found from this garden that the increase in pollinators, one of our other staff, our director of conservation, sent me a video the other day and was like, look at your work.

You know, there were butterflies and dragonflies and bees, and the garden was literally buzzing.

So just to be able to see that the benefit that we're bringing and also to see, you know, visitors and kids, maybe kids are learning about pollinators in school right now.

And they come here and they see it all in action.

So it's really exciting to be able to see that So native plants and pollinators are really, interdependent and interconnected because of their long evolutionary history together.

So native plants, benefit from pollinators because they need pollinators to actually move their pollen to other individuals of the same species.

and native pollinators benefit from native plants because they get the pollen, they get the nectar.

Some other of the other floral resources as well.

so it's really important that we have native plants for our native pollinators, across the country and across the world.

So these pollinators, especially our native ones, cannot survive without the native plants.

There's a couple different factors that are really going into that process.

One of the big ones is what we call pollination syndrome.

So pollinators no to it are attracted to certain colors, shapes and sizes of flowers.

So a lot of our native plants are native bees.

Sorry I should say, are really attracted to clusters of small blue or purple flowers, either on globes or spikes.

If we start bringing in non-natives that don't fit that pollination syndrome, a lot of the times our native pollinators can miss those as an adequate food source.

The native species here, especially since we have such big seasonal shifts.

They tend to be highly specialized.

So some of our native bees like my favorite, it's called Osmia atriventris, the Maine blueberry bee.

.

The Maine blueberry bee.

It's this tiny little bright metallic blue bee that pollinates blueberry If it doesn't have those wild blueberries, though, that population is going to crash.

It has such a tight relationship with the blueberry plant too, that when it visits a blueberry plant, it Sonicates.

We either call it sonication or buzz pollination.

It vibrates essentially, and that causes that blueberry flower to release massive, massive amounts of pollen and nectar far, far more than if a honeybee visits the same plant in the same flower turtle head is one of our native plants in our wetlands.

and it's only pollinated by bumblebees because bumblebees can actually pry open the turtle head flower to get into, the flower itself and get the pollen.

So it really depends on bumblebees.

So these interactions have evolved for millions of years and are really, really tightly connected to each other pretty well.

I think one thing just to remember is every one of these native plants is a pollinator plant and don't have to be thinking about a very specific group of plants to bring in the pollinators.

Every single one of these native plants will be a pollinating plant, So one of the overlooked parts about pollinator comfort conservation, a lot of the time is going to be trees.

trees are the single best resource for insects.

Specifically, the oaks doesn't really matter.

Red and white oak.

There's a little bit of a different species that will use each one, but a lot of them do crossover.

And but in that one family, we've got probably about 550 just butterflies and moths that are reliant on oak species in order to complete their life cycle.

It is an enormous amount.

But in New England we have between 4000 and 6000 species of lepidopteran, and having 500 of them feed on a single plant really highlights that plant is important for conservation.

Hi, I'm Andrea Berry, and I am the executive director of Wild Seed Project, and we're a Maine based nonprofit focused on returning native plants to the landscape.

So our, our organization's ideal is to shift the built landscape from ornamental plants that are really meant just to serve people, to healthy habitat that creates resilient ecosystems that are ready for the changing climate and that provide homes and food and places for reproduction for all different types of creatures who rely on plants for their lives and for what they eat and for where they live.

and we really believe in doing.

Native plants grown from seed with our community.

Because yes, Wild Seed Project can put in thousands and thousands of plants into the ground.

But we're still only a small organization, and there's only so much we can do and so much land that we can cover.

But we know if we get a whole community involved and everyone is putting in plants grown from seed with their neighbors in their community.

Think of the change that can happen there.

Hi.

My name is Gregg And I'm Jamien And welcome to our yard.

So we live in South Portland, Maine and bought this property.

13 years ago.

Yeah.

And, At that time, it was primarily just grassland, like, as far back as you can see, and a lot more pavement and kind of your typical yard.

Yeah, a big suburban yard Yeah.

Big suburban yard with a lot of tall grass in the back.

And, after taking many, many truckloads of invasives out of the back, we kind of started taking chunks of the yard and trying to create different habitats.

yeah.

We wanted to bring it alive.

We wanted.

We wanted birds.

We wanted insects.

We wanted life.

We wanted to look beautiful, too, but.

So we wanted things to be eaten.

So.

But it was a big, big project, and we had young kids, so we just took off little chunks of things, so this was actually a pandemic project over here.

When we moved in, there was the largest Mugo Pine and the largest Chinese Juniper I've ever seen covering this area here.

And Jamien and then our daughter.

This was like in the spring of 2020.

They took, they went and they tore it all out.

It was a huge project.

I mean huge roof balls.

And and then we were able to get babies of pitch pine and scrub up.

So we wanted to make a pitch pine scrub up community, and we planted bear berries and running service berries.

There's huckleberries and low bush blueberries.

And we've got other things.

And, you know, and just this is it's fourth year, fourth summer.

And, look at it, it's like quadrupled in size and it's really coming alive now.

yeah yeah.

And over time we've added, you know, on our hikes through this habitat type, we've collected just little bits of seeds like 20 seeds and grown them up and added them to our community.

Yeah.

We're you know, we're making it more diverse.

And every time we add a new species, like something really different, we bring in new insects and like, you know, and hopefully we make it more resilient to So this is the back side of our pitch pine scrub oak community.

And you can see where the lupines just took off here.

This is their favorite spot in the yard for whatever reason.

And last year we decided to put a bog in here.

And it looks still a little rough because it hasn't grown in, but we grew, pitcher plants from from Maine, from seed.

And we grew.

Jamien and I grew the wild cranberry and the redora and we've got Labrador tea.

And in a few years, this will be completely covered by, life.

And you won't see the line or, you know, the cranberries will cover it.

And behind it, we have huckleberries.

We're creating another little community of life here.

And, you know, if you on a sunny day, if you look inside, you will find insects inside the pitcher plants and Yeah, I think the ultimate like sign of success is when your plants start reproducing, you know.

biodiversity is really important, especially to native pollinators.

So again, we have, you know, 4000 species of native bees in North America, about 12,000 species of butterflies and Mars.

And those are just those three types of insects alone.

so in a lot of those, species rely are either specialists in terms of bees foraging only on certain plants.

So we need a lot of plants to fit each of the specialist bees that need certain plants to forage on.

and all of our butterflies and moths start their lives out as tiny little eggs laid on host plants.

and then develop into caterpillars which eat the host plants.

Some of those caterpillars are very, very, very choosy on what their host plant is.

Sometimes only 1 or 2 species.

So we need again a diversity of plant life in order to support those 12,000 species of butterflies and moths in the world.

And the the less diversity that you have in a system, the more likely it is to be hurt by a stressor.

so if we have a wide monoculture swath and an invasive insect comes in, that might wipe out all of that, that monoculture of trees or other plants.

we think of of biodiversity as being kind of an insurance policy so that we can, maintain the whole suite of species over time.

So my name is Nancy Olmstead, and I work for the Nature Conservancy in Maine as a conservation ecologist.

I also have a background in invasive plant biology.

I worked for many years for the state of Maine, helping their programs, to help landowners address invasive plants on their properties, as well as on state of Maine properties.

a native plant is one that has evolved here in place over hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of years.

We draw a little bit of an arbitrary line at the point of European colonization.

non-native plant is a plant that did not evolve in these habitats.

we have non-native plants that are in our gardens, that behave well, that, don't escape from the garden, that stay where they're planted.

but then we have the invasive species, and these are non-native species that have jumped the fence.

They are capable of spreading on their own, or certainly with human help.

and they can cause harm.

So they can cause harm either to the environment, to human health or economically.

those are the plants that are taking over habitats along rivers or in the forest, or even on the edges of residential properties.

259 00:15:35,618 --> 00:15:37,002 Maine has one native lupine, the sundial lupine.

And it is unfortunately extinct, in the state of mean and Wild seed project is really working to try and bring it back, bring those populations back into our state.

the the little known fact is that actually the lupine's that here in Maine, we see all over the roadsides are the Western lupine, which is not native to our region.

The western lupine doesn't necessarily displace, the native lupine, the sundial lupine, but instead what we see is that the Western lupine creates kind of a one plant only habitat So habitat where it's really the only species out there and it's pushing out a lot of our critical native plants like goldenrod and asters from those important roadside habitat.

What we need to do is to bring back biodiverse into all of those spaces and to ensure that, one particularly aggressive, fast spreading plant doesn't fill up the roadsides and fill up the landscape and, monopolize the habitat spaces Yeah.

So here in Maine we're really lucky to have, beautiful and diverse different kinds of habitats.

Everything from the salt marsh by the ocean up to our mountaintop forests and open letter areas.

And we know that the climate is changing now.

We're already experiencing that change.

And, we know that diverse native communities are more resilient.

And so when we start, allowing those communities to become overrun with invasive species we're losing some of that resilience of the community.

because we're removing individuals, we're removing individual trees and individual plants because they're being killed or overrun by invasive species.

invasive species pose a problem for native pollinators.

because as we see with invasive plants.

And what makes them invasive is that they're very, very good at reproducing very quickly, and kind of pushing everything else out.

So you'll see large swarms of one species of invasive plant, like the honeysuckle that we've seen for, Japanese knotweed, things like that, that just kind.

Of cover a whole area.

And the problem with that, even though you might.

See bees or butterflies coming to that plant and feeding, is that those plants only are open, like for a short amount of time over the course of the year.

We have bees and butterflies and hummingbirds that will be active at different times during the growing season.

So we need.

A large variety of plants blooming at different times, with different colors, with different shapes, to adequately exhibit the huge diversity of native.

Pollinators that we have.

So it might really be benefiting maybe 1 or 2 of our bumblebee species.

But, you know, Maine has almost 300 species of, of bees alone...native bees.

and in North America, it's 4000.

Species of native bees.

So that's a huge amount of species.

Just bees.

Alone, not even talking about, Butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, wasps, flies, other things that are pollinators.

So, seeing just.

1 or 2 species on a native or on an invasive plant, doesn't really mean that it's helping the population as a whole.

also, a lot of times, maybe invasive species are offering this really, enticing, very sugary pollen and nectar.

but it's not really producing that same level.

Of nutrition.

That our native plants are offering our native pollinators another one of my interests is, birds.

And I love hearing the songs of the birds in the spring.

And I love watching the birds.

and something that scientists have learned about invasive plants and non-native plants in general is that, they're less valuable for birds.

even birds that we think of as eating seeds because we see them coming to our feeders.

They're feeding their young, their baby birds a lot, a lot, a lot of insects.

so, insects need plants.

most insects like caterpillars, baby moths or little, little larvae.

They need plant tissues like leaves and stems to eat and grow big and be food for birds.

And so, when we are seeing non-native and invasive plants taking over, there are fewer caterpillar resources for our native birds to get for their young.

So really, when it comes down to it, the insect plant, the plant pollinator relationship is the driver of life on our planet.

Really.

Caterpillars are energy engines.

They can eat sort of, depending on the species part of their development.

Somewhere between 100 and 300 times their body weight every single day, which is an enormous, enormous amount of energy that they're taking in consuming and converting into animal protein that other organisms can eat.

So that plant into insect interaction is absolutely vital.

Your average chickadee needs about 2000 caterpillars to eat from the time it hatches from an egg to when it takes its first flight, My name is Cathy Rees and I'm one of the co-founders of the Native Gardens of Bluebell.

So I'm Avy Claire and another co-founder of the garden Well it started out a lot of it's about being a demonstration garden.

And we always talked about the slow garden movement, you know, just, showing people how to slowly build without a lot of inputs, a garden landscape.

and we liked this place because it had a lot of disturbed areas, a lot of places that could be used to demonstrate how you can repair the landscape.

it also had a variety of buildings that looked remotely residential.

And so we thought that was another positive aspect that people could see how they this could relate to their own homes.

So this was an opportunity for us to show how it can happen without a lot of money.

And you can glean plants and reseed plants and propagate, you know, propagate plants, move things around.

And really just be there for the community to demonstrate how they can do this in their own homes.

(background conversation) Hi.

I'm Nat Barrows, and I'm publisher and editor of Penobscot Bay press, which publishes the weekly packet, which is the home office for In Blue Hill, The garden out here is something that's very fun and exciting because we we had a very good garden here, but for various reasons, it fell into disrepair and kind of, sleeping.

And it wasn't going anywhere, hadn't been doing anything.

And I got together with some of the people with the native garden group here, connections through the staff and connections through the community.

And it just was one of those things that everything just kind of came together.

Well, I think we always had this vision of having these little satellite gardens around town when we started this whole organization, this it's it's a lot to tackle just even thinking about this site.

But, probably Val was instrumental of, kind of a friend to this garden, has a relationship with the editor there, and they definitely needed to revamp their garden.

It was time for that.

And she encouraged him to consider asking Cathy and me to, come up with this plan for it and do it as a native garden.

Right.

native plants are part of our heritage.

And so if we can display those on an up and a place on Main Street like we have right out in front here, that's a special opportunity.

So it was kind of things just came together really very nicely here with this group of people who were passionate and enthusiastic about it.

And we just approach each other and talk back and forth, and they did this wonderful plan, and it's just been a very exciting process all the way around.

and, and it's great that.

Yeah, the owner is so interested in it, and he wants to have a sign up and that could just lead to other spaces in town transforming into more native plants.

And that would be fabulous.

Right?

Then we have like again, this sort of like the sum of the parts becomes, we just build that momentum.

One garden at a time.

Yeah, people will take from it what they're ready to take from it in many ways.

But my hope is, is that this will inspire people to think about native plants more and, help this group out a little bit in some of their mission.

And, purposes.

I mean, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to do a garden in a, in a place like that, which has a lot of visibility.

It's, very different from this place in so many ways.

It's, you know, the beds are rectangular.

In a very formal design.

Yes.

It's a lot more formal than anything we've done here.

So it was for us.

It was an exciting opportunity to to work on that garden.

Yeah, I guess I could say that the biggest threat like to, like the existence of our native plants is a habitat loss.

And a lot of that habitat loss ends up happening, because of, much needed space for housing and businesses and other things like that.

And so it just seems that if we're going to be using these spaces, we should be using them better and we should be contributing something back to the environment that we have just taken and are using for our own purposes.

So by adding, native plants back in, you were kind of restoring the food and habitat for our native, insects, rodents, amphibians, birds of the above.

so and then the other thing is also that we just see how so many people have planted plants that we're now considered or are now considered invasive and they did that unknowingly.

And we for 100 years or 200 years, some of these plants have been planted, but those plants are now being spread to even the areas we are not impacting with our own buildings and farming and power line transmission and all of those things.

And so now even areas that we're not directly affecting are being affected by our actions in our gardens.

And so, by switching toward using more native plants than those that propagate all from those plants, like the seeds from those berries and fruits will be taken into the woods and put where they belong, rather than the invasive plant seeds.

on our property, if we want to attract wildlife, we want to provide nectar and pollen to our pollinators.

then we need to remove invasive plant species from those environments.

They're not providing the same kind of resources for, wildlife as our native species.

So, for example, many insects require other resources besides, nectar and pollen, and so they might be nesting in the stem of, of, or bushes, plant like a goldenrod or an aster, or they might be, using the underground roots of those species to overwinter in their overwintering stage.

So when we find an invasive plant species on our properties, we can remove it for the benefit of wildlife.

also, as a benefit to your neighbors, many of these invasive plant species spread very rapidly.

And so, I can't recall the number of times that I had people calling me, in my previous role to complain about their neighbors, invasive plants that were encroaching onto their property.

So it can become a nuisance issue, for dealing with your neighbors as well as, it can be a detriment to, wildlife.

So those are some reasons that we would want to remove invasive species and why they're a problem on our properties.

just five years ago, this was what was it called, bouncing bit, bouncing back.

And like Dame's rocket, these awful invasives that people cultivate in their gardens.

But once you get it here, it just takes over.

So we covered it in black plastic for.

Just a year year.

And then grew all these plants from seed, which you can grow a lot of plants in a, you know, with just a four inch pot of, of seeds.

and now, I mean, it's thriving.

It's and it's got so many layers of habitat, you know, you've got the little critters that can be at the bottom, and you've got the insects and the birds that nest in there, I feel that invasive plant species are really something that people can do something about.

I know that, you know, climate change is a very challenging topic because sometimes we feel that our own actions are not the only thing that we need to be doing.

Obviously, there are things that we can individually do, but there's a huge, societal change that we have to make that sometimes feels overwhelming.

the good news is with invasive plants, we can all get out there and do our part.

so on your own property for sure, you can learn to identify invasive plant species.

you can start learning how to remove them yourself.

Or you could hire someone to help you remove them.

And, there are many, land trusts or Audubon's or, even, state parks that have work days where you can go and help with invasive plant removal.

there are also community science programs where you can help, by being sort of a first responder to alert people that there may be an invasive pest or an invasive plant in your area.

So there's lots of different ways that you can, become involved and participate to help improve our habitats.

you know, from your own property all the way up to, helping our state and, nonprofit land managers.

and I and I keep telling people, just come and work with us every other Friday and you'll learn a lot about native plants.

But I think that like the lesson that we, try to teach in this garden is just start small and start slow.

when we look around at our habitats, there are certain kinds of habitats that we can identify, like, red maple swamp or like, northern hardwood forest.

And so within those kinds of plant communities, there are niches, that have, evolved and they provide habitat for different wildlife species, including insects, birds, arboreal mammals, like squirrels and weasels, Well, let's see.

Mountain top.

Meadow.

Dry grasslands.

Dry grasslands.

Bog pitch pine scrub oak.

Sand.

I think we did.

Sand.

Oh, no.

Sand.

Sand.

The same in.

Woodland.

Woodland?

there's sort of like the shady wetland.

Yeah.

Shady wetland for at least seven or.

Yeah.

7 or 8.

Yeah.

When we think about native plants.

One of the key pieces that we really hope hits home with folks is that every plant has a place it wants to be, and places where it doesn't want to be.

So if we actually change the way we think about creating gardens and changing our built landscapes, and we think about right plant for the right place.

So not I love the way this plant looks.

I want to put it here because that's for me.

But all right, here's the landscape.

It's dry.

It's sandy.

You know, it might get salt thrown on it from the road.

What can I plant there that's actually going to survive and not just survive, but thrive there.

So those ornamental plants that might not be native to an area, there are places in this world where their natural like perfect environment exists, and that's where they should be, and that's where they thrive.

Native plants here to the east coast, to the state of Maine.

They have those things.

It just happens to be right here.

So, they are absolutely going to be amazingly suited to arid environments, to places that are experienced having drought, if they happen to be plants that are used to living on, you know, sandy slopes or dry areas.

They're also amazing native plants that only exist in places where their roots can be completely submerged in water.

We need to shift, this concept of we want to, you know, find plants that are going to work for what we want, and we need to find the places and identify, like, who should be there, who's going to thrive there and put those plants there.

and a lot of our flowering plants are in the wetlands because they're more open and they can be more full of reference.

You know, they have this more light.

And so are a lot of our special plants are really often the especially the shrubs are wetland plants.

Yeah.

They're the most, showy.

So those are some of the most valued areas, like I always call it the ditch.

I mean, everybody has a ditch somewhere, right?

Because, you know, water from your driveway, you have to go somewhere.

Goes in the ditch.

Well, those ditches can be filled with the most beautiful flowering shrubs that we have.

So here we're in front of one of our swamp gardens or rain gardens, and we positioned and designed this garden to follow the flow of the ground water and the runoff that comes down this road that we're on.

So at the point of the hill that we're on, we discovered before we built the gardens that it's here at this point where you see the rocks, that the water runs off the road here to the side.

So we built this garden intentionally to catch all of that runoff water creating the swamp garden.

and really here, whether it's a property like this or I think even at your home on the East Coast, we're seeing an increase in the frequency and severity of storms.

And we have to think differently about our landscaping.

Are there things that we can do that, you know, work with what Mother Nature is giving us right now?

and things like a well positioned and, swamp or rain garden is, is a great way to do that.

Okay.

Well, if a plant is sited correctly, it's certainly tolerant to, a lot of natural conditions.

I mean, last summer we had some pretty dry weather and the library garden, which we did not water did absolutely fine.

Well, a lot of people were complaining that their gardens were wilting and they needed to water.

I mean, these are those are not obviously food plants for humans, but they're food plants for insects.

And they actually did not.

Nothing wilted.

Yeah.

Last summer it was amazing.

It was really remarkable, And the plants can do all that work.

We don't use any fertilizers.

And we and except for establishing a plant, we never water.

So we the plants are adapting and there.

That's the relationship that we're trying to encourage with everyone to less inputs.

we know that there's going to be bigger floods, there's going to be more intense storms that are going to cause trees to fall with wind.

and so we want to try to give our habitats the best advantage they can have the best leg up to prepare to be prepared for climate changes and respond, positively.

And if the understory of the forest is full of invasive plants, instead of being full of young tree seedlings and native shrubs when trees fall over, unfortunately we're going to get invasive plants there instead of healthy tree regeneration.

So that's an example of how we're moving.

Invasive species can advance resilience in the face of climate change.

when we want to build, resilient climate and build healthy habitat planting native plants.

It's so easy.

Winter sowing, which is, for me as a vegetable gardener, it has taken me a long time to completely relearn, or to to shift my way of thinking about when you sow seeds.

New Year's Day is like the most wonderful day in my house now, because, I get to sow my native plant seeds in pots on my deck in, like, a full snowsuit.

and I put them outside, and I let them go, and I let them be all winter long, and they get snowed on, and they get frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed, and then they get rained on.

And sometimes it's warm and sometimes it's subzero temperatures.

And then they start to grow, and they're these adorable little seedlings that are coming up out of those pots.

And I tend that pot of small seedlings over the course of the summer.

and you divide them.

So the first you've got one pot with maybe 50 seedlings in it, because they are definitely, I know teenagers and they are like teenagers, and they are happier when they are in a group.

and as they get bigger, they're kind of like, all right, I'm gonna wiggle my way around and get some more space.

and so we divide them, and finally we end up with a whole bunch of little seedlings ready to go into the ground in the fall, they can then go dormant over the winter and then pop back up stronger and healthier in the spring.

It's really easy to sow native plants from seed.

You don't need special grow lights.

You don't need a whole set up.

You don't need to lose your dining room table for the entire fall.

you plant them in little pots, you put them outside, and you let nature do its thing.

Because that's what we're learning from, and that's what we're mimicking.

We want to get as close to the natural environment as we can.

And.

And then they grow.

individuals are really critical for pollinator habitat and native plant, propagation.

some things that you can do even if you just have a really, really small area with just a few, room for a few pots is choose native plants to, to plant those pots.

if you have a larger area, maybe say a whole lawn or a back here, backyard that you wouldn't mind doing something different with, I would highly suggest, removing your grass and planting a native plant garden.

we have a huge diversity of native plants to choose from.

No matter what type of growing conditions that you have in your yard.

So you can probably find something that would fit really well for you.

you know, making sure that that native plant garden is protected from any pesticide sprays because that can harm or kill, the native pollinators that we want to protect.

and also just talking maybe with your local town, if you can't, if you can't yourself, plant any native plants in your area talking to your, local government about, maybe implementing some native plants in public places like parks or on trails.

and, street side plantings.

These are all great things for you to do as an individual and can really help pollinators a lot.

Every single space that we plant, native plants.

We are building habitat.

The great thing about insects is they're really, really tiny.

a little pot on your porch that has some native plants and a variety of native plants in it.

A butterfly, I can use that for much of its lifecycle.

you know, ants can, feed off of plants that are providing, sugar water for them or other types of things that are attracting them to come to those plants.

in a very, very small space.

So there really is kind of no space too small to put in native plants, So that's one of my favorite things about insects is insects are tiny and they're tiny and vitally important because they're so small.

You don't need a massive expanse of area to be able to protect them adequately.

As long as you have a backyard or even, you know, window boxes.

If you plant a window box with native plants that are going to attract those native bees, So by just increasing habitat on a really local scale, we can make a really big difference.

If every family in the neighborhood actually puts together a native pollinator garden.

And of course, the species in that are going to depend on your area.

But there's some really great resources to find what those species are.

We can vastly increase the amount of habitat available to insects, and then we'll see that bottom of the food chain stabilize.

If we can get that bottom of the food chain to stabilize, the rest of it will as well.

we have to remember that while I might be able to put one planter on my stoop, you might be able to put one planter on your stoop and somebody down the road might have a little traffic island that they can plant some plants at, and somebody else has a small backyard vegetable space that they can put plants right along the edge.

and it becomes a corridor for those species to find what they need.

All throughout the space.

I really think shrinking the lawn is a great thing to do.

No matter what.

And you could put anything there.

You could put trees, shrubs, you could put ground covers, you know, whatever you could, you could build a actual garden, or you could just put in some things and see what happens.

So I don't think there's any wrong way to start.

You know, you just have to start Some of my favorite things to do are not mowing.

Probably the single best thing you can do for insect conservation.

I leave a big patch in the middle of my yard un-mowed that's planted with wildflowers, but just a little border along the edge can dramatically increase your pollinators, your beneficial predators, and reduce your pests as well.

It's really a great system to be able to do that.

native plants are always really great to emphasize.

Bring as many of those in as you can and then those pollinator syndromes again.

So depends on what you're trying to attract.

Butterflies tend to like landing pad style of flowers.

You can think like a fall.

Sunflower is a really good example of them.

Or a daisy.

Even bees like lots of little flowers on a spike or a ball and then flies, which are often an overlooked group of pollinators.

Really.

Everything else, anything white, red, all those kinds of things are really popular with flies who do almost as much pollination as bees.

So when we started the gardens in 2020, we stopped mowing the lawn here on the hill.

we did some over seeding with native grasses as well as Rebecca.

and we've just let it go to meadow since then.

So every year it's kind of an adventure to see who and what pops up here in the meadow.

I think one of the easiest ways to get started is really just to go out in your yard and see how many things you can kind of identify as native or not native.

And then secondly, spend some time just observing your environment in your yard and then observing environments around you a great way to get started in learning more about native plants, invasive plants, pollinators.

And why all of this is really important is if you're able to just getting outside, maybe taking a field guide or using a, a plant identification app or something similar and just starting to learn what's around you, even just in your backyard or out in your front street.

I've documented.

So I really love using iNaturalist.

And and it helps me get to know the insects and everything better, but over 300 different insects in the yard.

And I know I'm just scratching the surface.

I don't know.

And, you know, it's funny when, you know, people come through occasionally and it makes them happy, you know, and I think I think we've like I think people don't realize what we've lost and what we can get back, And now the city is, you know, has 100.

100 resilient.

Yard.

And they're going to, you know, come up with plans for them and help them get plants and plant them to do yard, you know, just a part of planted yards.

Yeah.

And we feel like we've helped them I like to think that we've helped push that process.

Yeah.

yes, we want to see people put in native plants.

We also want to see people put in native plants that are grown from seed.

Because if you think about, the massive changes to our climate and the wild weather patterns that we're having when you have one identical clone that's been grown through cuttings, from the same plant for generation after generation, if that single genetic makeup can't handle the deep freeze or the heavy rains or the lack of snow, then that entire species that we've planted could be gone in a second.

If we plant plants from seed instead of from clones or cuttings, we are preserving the genetic variety that comes from the magic of genetic reproduction, We need to plant plants from seed so that we have all different kinds of makeups of genetics so that at least some.

Is going to make it through that deep freeze.

At least somebody is going to be able to handle the summer droughts or the summer torrential rain.

We need to make sure that we have a whole breadth of resilient species and resilient, individuals within a species to be ready for what's to come, so I mean an amazing thing about these plants is all of them were grown from seed.

And obviously when they complete their life cycle they create fertile seed, which they just make copious amounts of seed.

And so, you know, from one, this is just one head on, one plant in our yard.

And, you know, connecting with the wild seed project, we can now help get that out in the world.

And it just magnifies the good.

and I really like, you know, we learn a lot about plants, but I like that we also learn a lot from plants.

And one of the things I think we need to take more of is that just how generous the plants are, they're creating way more than they need, and they're giving it away for free.

And we all benefit.

And in the front yard.

I mean, it's so beautiful.

People will walk by the front and just say, wow, how did you do it?

And it's so awesome to be able to hand them the head, you know, a bunch of seeds and say and teach them how to do it themselves.

We need to make sure that, those native species are available, because when there's a catastrophic flood, we need something to hold the riverbank.

When there's a deep, deep freeze, we need something that can handle making it through the long cold of a long winter.

And we need to be thoughtful about how those plants are getting placed into the landscape.

So certainly, we absolutely should be protecting our forests and shrub lands and those natural spaces that we're able to conserve through, whether it's land trusts and land easements and homeowners who are committed to protecting natural habitat.

But we also need to be thinking about the built landscape, about the parking lot islands and our front yards that right now most of are filled with monoculture grasses, in the form of lawns instead of native habitat for native species.

even in towns and cities and places that we might not usually think about as pollinator habitat.

You can really make a big difference in your own backyard by choosing native plants, removing invasive species, and really trying to support, the pollinator species that are around you you know.

You know, what was really interesting is the front yard is the last area we did because we didn't know what to do with it because it's shady.

And then it goes to sun.

And it's wet and it goes to dry.

Wet to dry.

And then we realized we could do everything in a small space.

And so we've got like things that like deep shade and like more moisture near the house.

And then it goes to gradually drier and more sun.

And it's like you can pack it all in, in a small space.

So almost like a big discovery.

Biodiversity is a huge issue.

because the more biodiverse an ecosystem is, the healthier is, and the better able that the ecosystem is to respond to change.

but then also realizing that you can make a difference as an individual.

Pollinators are everywhere, And they need as much habitat as we can provide, There's so much possibility when we all work towards a common cause.

And I mean climate change.

It's coming, it's here And it's really all of our responsibility to do something.

And for me, planting native plants in my gardens and digging up parts of my lawn and putting in species that are kind of good, contribute to healthy habitat and and diverse ecosystems, that's a thing I can do.

I have some agency there.

It's actually making an impact on something that's so massive that it's really hard to find a purchase.

But I know every single day I can make a difference by planting native plants.

So This program was funded in part by The Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund To learn more, or to schedule a screening in your community visit mooseyproductions.com The runoff from any of the chemicals that are being used in gardens go into our watershed.

yeah.

Well, they're those chemicals are just being dispersed in the environment, in many ways.

So some of the water goes into our groundwater, which might end up in the ocean or in a stream or in a well where we're going to drink it, or a fish has to swim in it or, salamander needs to metamorphose in it.

So those, chemicals can be, again, impacting things that we don't we don't even register, So the lawn chemicals and fertilizers, pesticides and things like that, you know, they you know, they can be problematic.

for those organisms in the soil and sort of break down that network that they have going, which is helping to feed the plants, which of course is helping to feed the insects and everything else.

It's all connected.

because we don't even know where the water goes when we put it on the ground.

our aquifers are so mysterious that where we honestly don't even know where it goes.

And so we can see where the surface water goes.

And that is something we can really focus on.

Like where is that surface water going and how fast is it moving?

And, how can we keep that as pure as possible?

So I think doing things like rain gardens and creating places where water can infiltrate into the, into the soil, it's going to be a lot better than getting it to move quickly into a stream or into the ocean, and it will have a chance to be filtered by the bacteria and the fungi and all the organisms that are living in the soil.

And if there are organic compounds that can be used by plants and other things as well.

fertilize your lawn or you need to fertilize your garden.

I know I have people need to fertilize their vegetables.

Well, that's one thing.

I mean, it's for food, but you don't need to fertilize your whole yard.

And if you have plants that are adapted to to just the fertilizer that comes with the snow or the fertilizer that the nutrients that are released by the microbes in the soil from the organic matter that you put there.

That's going to be a much healthier system.

I think we are sort of, brainwashed into thinking we need inputs, you know, because those are the things a company can sell.

And so we sort of, we've, we bought into that way too much about like.

You know, cutting the lawn and then taking the lawn clippings away instead of leaving them lye and all of those methods and then having to put fertilizer, then instead of just leaving the lawn clippings in place, even, you know, even if you have a lawn, which is doesn't include any native plants, probably.

I mean, still, you can manage it in a more sustainable way.

I mean, here we we are doing this garden out of plants that are just native to Maine, that we decided that would be the parameters we would set for ourself if it was native to any place in the state of Maine, we could use it in the garden.

So but that is just the exercise that we are are doing in this garden as a demonstration.

We don't expect everybody to take up that charge and then eliminate every non-native plant from their yard.

But we thought it would be it'd be helpful to at least show what it could look like if you did.

So there are going to be people have ones who have vegetable gardens and all those things that aren't native and that we have to accept that.

And but we can manage those things a lot better than we have been using cover crops and no tell.

And all of those other practices are really important, even if you have to grow vegetables.

So even though you want to grow a lawn so yeah, it sounds like native gardening is plant easier than, Maybe a traditional garden?

Well, it's also just what the definition of a garden is.

Then you have to think about that.

Like is your your definition of a garden, a square plot with individual plants all surrounded by mulch?

Or is your definition of a garden a landscape that includes, flowering shrubs and trees and textures of, of leaves and, winter interests?

you know, when things are, are bare in the winter and, and, or and it's just being out the garden is the outside.

It's the, it's the outdoors.

That's the garden.

Yeah.

And I think part of like this exercise too, is helping people sort of adjust their esthetic a little bit.

I mean, we do have I mean, for some reason we humans, we just want everything to be really neat and organized and that somehow makes our heart feel good.

But on the other hand, like a little bit of wild, can be really fulfilling too.

And I think that if people can see what that little bit of wild looks like, and if it can speak to them, then they can be motivate it to try some things in their own yard.

And messy is typically better than we ever thought it would be.

And so getting used to that, or finding ways to have a mess that looks intentional.

Yeah.

And like it's supposed to be there is going to be better than just any old mess.

So just how do.

You and that's.

Managed.

Yeah, I think that intention is part of what we're trying to share too, in this in this demonstration is,