Pollinator Gardens--A Guest Post by Debbie Burns

Dear friends,

Today I have another guest blog post article by my dear friend, Debbie Burns.  Debbie lives in north Texas on her Beulah Land farm, with her husband John.  She shared a bit about her chickens with us last week in an article titled Let the Chickens do the Digging.

Here, she talks a bit about her Pollinator Gardens and shares a few more photos with us.  It's important these days to plant things to support our native pollinators.  So many of them are destroyed by agricultural chemicals, damaging weather, etc.

Hope you are inspired to plant a few plants in your garden that attract pollinators!

Pollinator Gardens

by Debbie Burns

When we decided to convert to Wild Life Conservation for our land Ag Exemption we had no idea how much it would impact our lives.  One of our goals was to create Pollinator Gardens to feed and nourish all kind of pollinators, not just butterflies or hummingbirds.

Since there is no water source in our pastures we wanted to test the Pollinator Garden idea in our yard, convenient to the water spigot with easy access for maintenance. We designed one in the front, the South Pollinator Garden, and one on the side, the West Pollinator Garden. Again, these were test gardens so we decided to not spend a lot in set up. We had some old landscape timbers – yes, I know they’re not food safe by any means, but they were already here and paid for – to edge the gardens and hold down landscape fabric or cardboard.

The West Pollinator Garden

 We used the cardboard to mulch around the plants, on wet ground, then added pine bark mulch on top to make it look better. Surrounding the garden area I have a width of landscape fabric with stepping stones to hold it down. This was to prevent the yard Bermuda from taking over the garden area. So far that has worked well.  I still need to put pine bark mulch on top of the landscape fabric but that has fallen to the bottom of the budget list. Since this is the first year for the plants I’ve had to water them regularly. I’m hoping that won’t be needed next year as their root system grows.

The West Pollinator Garden showing walkway around the perimeter

I purchased the plants for the South Pollinator Garden – butterfly bush (which was the only one that died), yarrow, esperenza, orange lantana, tansy, white salvia, Purple Homestead verbena, lemon verbena, achillea Pink and two stevia herb plants. Even thought these plants are labeled for full sun, they haven’t done as well as the same plants in the West garden that gets partial shade.

A friend invited me over to dig from her native plant collection. On her recommendation I purchased the Native Texas Plants book, which is fantastic. Most of her plants went into the West Pollinator Garden – daylily, lantana, salvia, sensitivity plant. I also purchased German chamomile and blue salvia that is outdoing itself in there.

I transplanted zinnias I  seeded inside, but the self-seeded zinnia from last year out-did all the other plants in attracting the hummingbirds and butterflies to the West Garden. The hummingbirds flit from the flowers to the feeder hanging close-by on the clothes pole.

South Pollinator Garden

So how did these two simple gardens change our lives?  It’s amazing how much time we spend watching the birds and butterflies zoom in and out around the gardens---especially the West garden with those bright red zinnias. At one time we counted eight hummingbirds buzzing around and we’ve seen swarms of butterflies hovering over the flowers. Wasps and mud daubers come to dig in the mud to build their nests.

The South Pollinator Garden has a shallow dish to supply water for the pollinators also.

South Pollinator Garden

As we’ve sat at the kitchen table, looking out on the West Pollinator Garden, we’ve seen so many different colors of hummingbirds, butterflies and dragonflies. We’ve also seen blue birds, cardinals, swallows and many other birds come up to our yard that have not been there in prior years. We didn’t realize the Pollinator Gardens would draw up so many different types of birds.

Swing beside the West Pollinator Garden

 We’ve found we’re enjoying our yard so much more than in past years, spending time on the porch swing beside the West Garden or walking out tending the plants in both gardens. I guess the Pollinator Gardens have drawn us up to them as well!

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The hummers are here!

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 23, 2007

Mornin' earthly gardeners!

I’m up early this morning for some reason. It’s still dark so I can’t look out the window to the garden.

I had a thrill yesterday when I was sitting here and heard a distinctive roaring sound go by my window. It was the first hummingbird of the season! That’s always exciting to us here. Like I’ve mentioned before, when we first moved into this house, there were almost no birds that came near the garden. After ten plus years, we’ve attracted numerous new species to the property by adding a water source, plants that birds love, shelter and food. Husband is the official Keeper of the Hummers here, and lovingly boils up a combo water and sugar for them and keep the feeders full and clean. Bacteria grows easily in sugar water, so it’s important to clean out the feeding tubes once a week or so. We don’t like to use the commercial foods out there, because many of them have harmful dyes. The water doesn’t need to be red as long as the feeder has some red on it. Believe me, the birdies will find it!



Thought you might enjoy seeing a photo of a tropical canna that I’m growing in pots here. This is from last year, and just last weekend I divided the bulbs and repotted them into several larger containers. These things multiply fast, and the bright colors also attract hummingbirds.

I also grow a lot of native salvias here, and the hummers love those, too. I have white, but mostly grow the reds and dark pinks. They also go for the rosemary when it blooms, which was a surprise to me. Since discovering that, I’ve planted lots more rosemary, which does well in our Mediterranean-like climate.

Other things that attract the hummingbirds is the red trim on our porch. LOL. Our birds are feisty, and have been known to buzz our heads if we are too late in the morning getting the food out. Although we can’t be for certain without tagging them (and neither of us wants to deal with that) I’m pretty sure that some of the same birds have come back over the last few years, and they bring their friends with them. Last year, we had at least four pair of them that nested here. It’ll be interesting to see how many show up this year.

Happy spring!

bobbi c.
All photos and text copyright ©2005-2007 Bobbi A. Chukran

Hummers!

The hummingbirds are in full force this year. Every year since we’ve started feeding them, the numbers have grown. We have two feeders, and consistently have four or five hummers hovering around each of them throughout the day. I’ve been trying like crazy to get good photos of them, but alas, that hasn’t happened yet.

I did run across this website though, that has some excellent photos of hummingbirds as well as maps, other information, etc.

And here's some good information, Q&As, etc. about hummingbirds over on the Birdwatcher's Digest website. And another article there lists the thirteen best plants that will attract those tiny feathered friends!

As well as the food we put out for them, we also grow native plants that they love. One of my favorites are the native salvias. Almost indestructible plants, they bloom off and on all year here, and the bright red and hot pink blooms attract the birds. That's the key--bright colors, and especially red!

dig it!

bobbi c.