[Pollinator] Integrating Pollinator and Human Landscapes

[Celeste Ets-Hokin]

Thanks for the inspiring article, Sam, and congrats, Kathy, on your fully realized pollinator garden!  For those who may, for a variety of reasons, want or need to keep some area of "lawn", there are a number of good Eco-lawn alternatives these days.  For instance, Pro Time Lawn Seed in Portland - http://protimelawnseed.com/  - offers everything from "Fleur de Lawn", which can be mowed like a regular lawn, but includes clover, daisies, baby blue eyes and yarrow, to no-mow pollinator and xeriscape options.  

Pro Time also sell seeds for native and other greases that never need mowing, and require little water, yet appear as soft, rolling waves of green.  The Gardens at Lake Merritt in Oakland planted native grasses similar to this for people to sit on and view the surrounding flower gardens and duck pond.  

Home lawns such as these can also provide a nice anchor for beds of pollinator flowers, shrubs and trees planted around them.  They provide a green space where people can relax and appreciate the beauty of the pollinator garden in surround sound, abuzz with pollinators of every stripe.  

And I think this is the idea conveyed in the great article Sam shared - we need to embrace our wild side a little when planting an effective pollinator garden, but we also can and need to make the overall presentation look inviting and well cared for.  Adding places for people to walk and sit enhances the overall form and function of the garden, and brings people closer to the pollinators they will surely attract!




Sent from my iPad

> On Sep 16, 2016, at 11:01 AM, Kathy Keatley Garvey <kathykeatleygarvey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Well said, Sam!
> We are lawnless in Vacaville, Calif. and have been since 1974. We have a pollinator garden filled with scores of floral resources. Our frequent visitors include honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, digger bees, sunflower bees, sweat bees, syrphids, dragonflies, monarchs, Gulf Frits, Western tiger swallowtails, buckeyes, painted ladies and others too numerous to mention. Lawn? No, thank you. (And we wish everyone would plant a pollinator garden instead of a lawn)
> 
>> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Droege, Sam <sdroege at usgs.gov> wrote:
>> All
>> 
>> This week I spoke to a group of Landscape Architects.  Good discussions and I pointed out that I thought one of our biggest societal problems was the perceived conflict between creating landscapes friendly to pollinators (and, btw, to all of nature) and the traditionally acceptable tended landscapes that are mowed regularly.
>> 
>> It turns out that this has been thought of before and likely quite deeply by landscape architects.  Here is a fabulous article from the 90's: 
>> 
>>  http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/jrnl/1995/nc_1995_nassauer_001.pdf
>> 
>> The key point here is that people really don't necessarily NOT want natural landscapes what they want is a landscape that is clearly cared for.  A naturalized landscape is often preferred, but it must be neat and fit into the norms of the culture.  Of great importance is the presences of human structures (sidewalks, fences, houses, buildings etc.) that are clearly demarcated by neatly mown areas, are in good shape and show that the owner of the property takes care of their property and has done all these things on purpose.
>> 
>> I think it would be very useful to build into the advice we provide about plantings some elements that present shows of care and intention of those environments, else we risk alienating the very audiences we want to convert.  
>> 
>> I also think it might be useful to have more landscape architects on board with what we do.
>> 
>> sam
>> 
>>   From a Country Overlooked
>> 
>> 
>> There are no creatures you cannot love.
>> 
>> A frog calling at God
>> From the moon-filled ditch
>> As you stand on the country road in the June night.
>> The sound is enough to make the stars weep
>> With happiness.
>> In the morning the landscape green
>> Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
>> The day is carried across its hours
>> Without any effort by the shining insects
>> That are living their secret lives.
>> The space between the prairie horizons
>> Makes us ache with its beauty.
>> Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
>> To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
>> The cottonwood also talks to you
>> Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
>> You are at home in these
>> great empty places
>> along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
>> You are comfortable in this spot
>> so full of grace and being
>> that it sparkles like jewels
>> spilled on water.
>> 
>> 
>>            - Tom Hennen
>> 
>> -- 
>> Bees are Not Optional
>> Apes sunt et non liberum
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kathy Keatley Garvey
> UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
> kegarvey at ucdavis.edu 
> Or
> kathykeatleygarvey at gmail.com 
> Website: http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/
> Department News:  http://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/ 
> Bug Squad blog: http://ucanr.edu/blogs/bugsquad/index.cfm
> 
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