LAWN & GARDEN
Green Actions
Selecting deciduous trees (trees that shed their leaves in winter) for summer shade and evergreens for winter windbreaks can lower costs for heating and cooling 20% or more. (Greenscapes)
Pollinator Form and Map coming soon!
GENERAL GARDEN ACTIONS
Use organic mulch (like leaves) under trees and bushes where grass won’t grow but weeds will
Use groundcover plants in any garden bed as a low-growing base layer
Strategically place deciduous trees to provide shade in the summer and evergreens to provide a windbreak in the winter
Select deep-rooted plants for your outdoor spaces to hold and soak up rainwater flowing off roofs, driveways, and other impervious surfaces
Create a rain garden
If you do need to water, water plants, not pavement
Plant potted plants in areas of limited space or a tough to plant area like a patio
other actions
LAWN
HARD-SCAPE
POLLINATOR GARDEN ACTIONS
Register your Pollinator Garden/Plants! Use form at the top of this page.
Plant pollinator plants. (See Resource section for plants for our area.)
Plant specifically “native” pollinator plants.
Don’t use pesticides.
Leave material for pollinators to nest in like dead trees or snags. Refer to further explanation on this page of the Xerces website. https://xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/nesting-resources
Who are pollinators?
Birds (especially hummingbirds), bats, bees (native bees and honey bees), wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and other small mammals that travel from plant to plant carrying pollen on their bodies.
Why should we help pollinators?
Plants need the pollinators to help them grow and many of the foods that we enjoy come from plants that need pollination!
The Pollinator Partnership explains it this way, “Somewhere between 75% and 95% [1] of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination – they need pollinators. Pollinators provide pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops. That means that 1 out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators [2, 3]. If we want to talk dollars and cents, pollinators add 217 billion dollars to the global economy [4,5], and honey bees alone are responsible for between 1.2 and 5.4 billion dollars in agricultural productivity in the United States [6]. In addition to the food that we eat, pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife [7].
The Audabon explains the threat to our pollinators this way, “Many species of pollinators are experiencing dramatic declines. Populations of native bees and other pollinators are threatened by climate change, pesticide exposure, habitat degradation and agricultural intensification, declining populations of native flowering plants, and introduced pathogens.”
Visit this Native Pollinator Demonstration Garden in Beverly:
Dane Street Beach
(93 Lothrop St) around the Flag Pole
Originally installed by Green Beverly and NOFA Summer 2023
RESOURCES
Plants lists for our location:
The Massachusetts Department of Agriculture has developed a list of native pollinator-friendly plants that are commonly found in local nurseries. An online searchable version of the list is linked here.
Many more lists are on this page of the Mass Pollinator Network:
https://masspollinatornetwork.dreamhosters.com/planting-for-pollinators/
Massachusetts organizations that talk about pollinators:
Audubon: https://www.massaudubon.org/nature-wildlife/the-power-of-pollinators
Mass Pollinator Network: https://masspollinatornetwork.dreamhosters.com/
National Organizations that talk about pollinators:
Pollinator Partnership: https://www.pollinator.org/pollinators
Xerces: https://xerces.org/
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Pesticides and herbicides are not necessary for a beautiful, low maintenance landscape. These chemicals rob the soil of vital nutrients and microbes, requiring more and more applications of fertilizers and chemicals to compensate. (source)