WSDA Blog

For our final guest blog for Pollinator Month, Washington Bee Atlas volunteer Brendan McGarry talks how creating a garden with bees in mind has changed both what he plants and how he manages his garden. 

Volunteering for the Washington Bee Atlas has been an eye-opening, fruitful experience for me. It’s also helped me make more thoughtful decisions about how I plan and manage my ever-expanding garden. From choosing the right plants to deciding when and how to tend the existing landscape, native bees will now always hold sway over these choices!

When my partner and I bought our home on Vashon Island five years ago, we felt immensely lucky to have a place to put down roots. I have always been a naturalist and particularly a birder, but in recent years I have become more enamored with trying to know more species and understand whole ecosystems. In my mind’s eye I imagined the landscape around our house full of native plants and a bounty of animals thriving in these spaces. Certainly, we had bones to work with, native trees and shrubs, but we also inherited a garden and forest slowly being overtaken by invasive plants after years of neglect. It was time to get to work.

Remove and replace was the overall plan, but when my partner agreed to focus on mostly native plants, I am not sure she knew how focused I’d become on habitat and who was using it. Our goal was always to have outdoor spaces we could comfortably enjoy, but the reality was that with this came some prioritization of creatures other than ourselves. If we wanted a garden that was truly bee friendly, bird friendly, and one that leaned on native plants to take care of themselves, our garden might look a little different than the average space. This feels important because while I can have minor impacts on public land management with a lot of effort, I can have deep, meaningful impact on my yard. And if others did the same, we’d be living in a more beautiful, healthy, ecologically diverse world - an idea championed most famously by entomologist and author, Douglas Tallamy, who co-founded the movement called Homegrown National Park.
 
Five years into what has turned out to be a very ambitious project, I feel we are making serious strides. Even if the bees I now notice visiting native flowers I have been patiently cultivating were always there, my seeing them and seeing them using the plants I’ve added feels like a serious win. Getting to share spaces with bees has been a magical experience and it feels like I am just inches away from seeing something new every time I step outside. Plus, these bees are literally helping spread more plants around my property through their pollination services (and do a good job of making sure my fruits and vegetables are abundant too). I think everyone should emphasize their gardens as habitat for native species, because it’s so much fun. But where to start? Here are some key takeaways I’ve gathered from paying attention to the bees in my garden as an Atlas Volunteer, while actively making it a healthier local ecosystem. 
 
Small choices are good choices
 
Even if, like me, you fall deep into creating wildlife-friendly spaces and have a lot of room to do so, it’s probably useful to curtail your enthusiasm and do it well on a smaller scale. Finding a list of good bee plants from a reputable source and devoting a small space to them is a great start. (I am focused on native plants throughout this blog, but that doesn’t mean non-native plants can’t be helpful or beneficial.) Changing your behaviors around yard care and leaving bee habitat alone can be equally as important as planting flowers. There are a lot of details and specifics to get caught up in (see below), but really, if you get some high-quality native plants established or provide nesting habitat on a small scale, you are doing the work. Even leaving bare dirt and maybe even letting a few so-called “weeds” grow can be just as valuable if you are short on time or resources to actively garden.
 
Choose plants that provide food, not just pretties.
 
If I could instill anything in someone interested in supporting native bees in their garden, it would be picking the right plants. Because phrases like “pollinator friendly” have become catchy in recent years, there’s been a tendency to use them liberally at nurseries with little thought to local ecosystems or who will actually be visiting the plant other than European honey bees. Wildflower seed mixes might be filled with introduced species that outcompete native ones in the disturbed soils of most urban and suburban gardens. Introduced species that are pollinator picks might offer some nectar and pollen, but follow human demands for showier flowers over the food they offer (and they frequently lack multitrophic benefits to other native creatures). 
 
In the Pacific Northwest it’s relatively easy to find native plants to purchase, but because many are popular you have to be very thoughtful in what you purchase. So-called “Nativars” are cultivated versions of native plants that have been bred to emphasize certain characteristics. If the plant you are considering has a fancy name like “White Icicle” or “Arizona Sun” on the tag, that’s a cultivar and if you are truly serious about supporting native bees with local plants, consider favoring a wild type instead. There’s good evidence bees prefer natives over cultivars and depending on the trait being bred for, the plant can have reduced ecological benefits including reduced production of nectar and pollen, or even flowers that aren’t accessible to bees because of an altered morphology. Plus, cultivars are frequently propagated by cloning, which means the genetic diversity they bring to your local landscape is reduced, impacting their resilience to climate change and disease.

Plants in place.
 
Native plants are inherently better at growing where you live and thriving in your specific climate. Some native plants are more finicky, requiring specific soil types, soil moisture, and seasonal variation but others are less discerning and easy to grow. A little research on local plants can help you decide which ones will thrive and frequently these are the ones that local pollinators will recognize and visit most readily because they have ecological and evolutionary history together (this is an excellent book to help make some decisions). I know from experience that trying to make a plant grow where it doesn’t want to is either a lot of work or a losing battle. I now try to think a little harder about where a plant actually grows in the wild - not just “native to Washington” but where in the landscape, and choose accordingly based on the spots in my yard that are sunny or shady, moist or dry. Many high-quality native plant nurseries are good at helping you figure out where to place plants (but they probably won’t have a sense of what bees visit specific flowers). When I first started our garden, I didn’t pay close attention and ended up with species that are primarily from the east side of the Cascades. Adding them is fun and looks cool, but they might not pair so well with native pollinators in my neck of the woods. Anecdotally, I’ve collected at least a dozen species of bees on the Pacific ninebark in my yard and seen next to nothing visit the golden currant (which grows primarily east of the Cascades).  


Flowers throughout the seasons

Being a Washington Bee Atlas volunteer has made me realize that with great bee diversity comes a great variety in life histories. Some bees are out for the whole season, while others have a quick turn around when their favored flowers bloom. Simply knowing that some bees are oligolectic (may feed only on a single species of flower) while others are polylectic (visiting many types of flowers) has changed my goals in the garden. To support pollinators, I now try to grow a variety of plants that bloom throughout spring and summer. This takes some planning, but it’s well worth the effort because it means I see more bees in the yard.
 
More than just flowers
 
When I first started paying attention to bees, I had no idea the variety of places they nested. I am not sure what I thought, but I certainly didn’t realize that 70% of all species nest in the ground. This realization changed the decisions I made about planting and made me appreciate bare soil as much as places covered in vegetation. Now when I work in the garden, I try to leave the ground bare and undisturbed in places, use permeable materials like gravel for my paths, and avoid heavy mulching where possible. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out the right choice, because I rely on heavy mulching to suppress invasive plants as I expand native growth. But I can also mindfully keep spaces on the edges that support bees as my mulch breaks down and new plantings establish. (Also, because I can’t do everything I want at once, my various garden quadrants are in different stages, which means while I might not have the best bee habitat in one in early stages of restoration, another is much better as I reduce the movement of soil and plants establish and bloom.)

Other bees of course nest in wood or even piles of brush. As I prune and remove plant material, I pile it up into wildlife piles that I know birds and bumblebees like to nest in. I am a trained arborist, which means I climb and prune my own trees, but where possible I leave deadwood in the trees instead of pruning it out, and even add logs to the garden as habitat for wood nesting bees and other invertebrates. A cool piece of wood can be an accent to your garden rather than an eyesore.

Preparing for the “off season”

A tradition of many gardens in the fall is to tidy up. As it turns out, this tidying is not very helpful for bees and other native insects. Instead of cutting down old seed heads and stems on flowers, I leave them where they are, knowing that hollow stems may host bees waiting out the winter as eggs, larvae, or yet to emerge mature bees. Likewise, I am particularly relaxed about pithy, hollow stem shrubs like elderberries and roses, mostly leaving them alone instead of pruning out dead bits. Seeing Osmia and Ceratina bees nesting in those hollow stems, even bamboo poles I use in the vegetable garden, is far more valuable to me than tidying.

I also like to leave certain plant material where it falls every year instead of raking it up. There are some ifs and buts here (especially if you grow fruits and vegetables), but leaf litter and other fallen plant material helps reduce soil compaction and erosion, while providing insects better shelter through the cold seasons. You’ll need to find your own barometer for what’s acceptable but aside from keeping paths clear of leaf litter, I leave it where it falls.

When the end of the growing season is finally upon me, I also start to plan for next year. What new plants might I add to better pair with my landscape? How might I find balance between what I want and what bees and other native species need? But mostly, I just dream about another season to come and if next year I’ll see more bees, benefiting from my past season’s efforts.