How to Certify Your Pollinator Garden | Gardening Tips and How-To Garden Guides

After a summer of extreme heat and continuing lack of rain, yellow is the predominant floral color in Linda and Rich Silverman’s certified pollinator garden.

Originally from New York, Rich moved to York in 1975. He and Linda married in 1981, settling into their home on a corner lot in a tree-lined part of the city.

“We didn’t know anything about anything,” said Rich Silverman of the plants then growing around their yard.

In 2005, they met York County Extension educator Connie Schmotzer and became enthralled with the native plants garden she had helped to develop around the Penn State Extension agriculture offices.

“So we got into the first class that was held on native plants,” Silverman recalled. “We ripped out our garden plants that we had paid a professional to put in. It’s about helping to save our planet; we’re very conscious of the need for that.”

In short, the Silvermans are focused on providing an environment that will attract pollinators — the insects critical to the worldwide food supply and survival of many plant species.

The Silvermans’ certified pollinator garden was one of three included on a recent tour that followed a morning seminar focused on attaining certification for a garden planted and maintained to attract and support pollinator insect species.

“We have a sunny and dry environment in our garden,” Linda Silverman explained to the 30 or so master gardeners and others interested in learning how to qualify for certification.

“We had pin oaks originally, which had overgrown against the house; then we got an ice storm,” she added, a weather event which totally changed their landscaping. They opted to plant native species as much as possible, while “using what we have.”

Developing their landscape to the pollinator-friendly area it is today has been an ongoing process over the years, beginning with the backyard, which they call “the meadow.”

Paths wander through multiple “islands” of native-species plantings. Each is tightly packed with plants set closely together, which provides shade and discourages invasives. Power lines cross overhead, so trees must be kept to a maximum height of 20 feet, a limitation on planting taller pollinator-friendly species.

“This year has been a disaster,” Linda lamented of the continuing hot and dry conditions. “We have all sorts of birds that sit overhead on the wires and bring in seeds of invasives. This year we’ve fought poison ivy. So the gardens aren’t as lush as usual, with less color.

“We have plants of all sizes. We let them there as they seed and don’t move them, so they grow close enough that you can’t see the ground or any mulch underneath.”

Providing for Pollinators

While the abundant blooms of early and mid-season plants have been replaced with a wide variety of pollinator and bird-loving seed heads and rose hips, the Silvermans’ gardens are alive with bees, colorful butterflies, tiny moths and an array of other busy insects.

The seminar preceding the tour was part of the ongoing learning activities for master gardeners, as well as for others interested in meeting garden certification criteria.

Calling insects “the chickens of pollination,” Schmotzer emphasized bees are an agricultural product, and as such, need good health and nutrition to sustain their critical work in pollinating food and fiber crops.

The collapse of large numbers of bee colonies in 2011 sparked the growing interest in providing havens filled with plant species to meet their food, water, shelter, nesting and hibernation needs, as wild native plant areas continue to be bulldozed out and paved over.

Goals of developing and sustaining certified pollinator gardens include creating public awareness for the needs of pollinators and the challenges they face. Teaching home gardeners how to attain certification by creating safe havens for pollinators is another objective.

“We need to provide food sources, water sources, shelter and nesting sites,” Schmotzer said. “We also need to remove invasives and reduce pesticide use.”

The first step in meeting certification requirements is downloading a worksheet from the certification website. Included in that information are both application materials and extensive lists of plants that meet the criteria.

Some established gardens may already qualify for the designation, based on what and how many species of plants, trees and shrubs are growing.

Perennial plants native to the Mid-Atlantic states top the list of desirables. Included should be 15 plants of early, mid-season and late-blooming species.

“Some 25% of our native bees are ‘specialists,’ and use only pollen from a few selected plants,” cautioned Schmotzer.

Nature times those insects’ emergence to occur when appropriate specialist plant species are in bloom, to provide the necessary food supply.

“Most gardens are 75% non-natives and plants sold at garden centers,” Schmotzer said. “Most butterfly and moth species can only feed on plants they’ve co-evolved with.”

Many of the most beneficial plants for pollinators are not the bright, colorful, showy hybrid ones sold and grown in today’s popular landscaping. Instead, the preferred natives often have much smaller, less colorful bloom characteristics, but provide exactly what certain pollinators need at the most critical times.

“Pollinators can’t find much in traditional gardens. Annuals don’t count for certification,” said Schmotzer. “Perennials are much better. And avoid double flowers, which may have no pollen or nectar that the pollinators can access.”

Also required are four kinds of native trees or shrubs and three host plants for caterpillars. Water and nesting site features provide pollinators with those necessities for completing their life cycles and reproducing successive generations.

Ideally, plants should include a variety of bloom shapes and sizes. While mixed-seed offerings are available commercially, Schmotzer said many of them contain non-native species and some that may be invasive, so checking the seed ingredient list is especially important.

Fall cleanup is a traditional garden chore, but removing spent plant material often leaves many pollinator species with no appropriate sites for hibernating through the winter.

“Leave your garden cleanup until spring,” Schmotzer advised. “Cut back perennials as late as possible; maybe wait until ‘tax day,’ until bees have emerged.”

Butterflies and Moths

Extension specialist Deb Carman reviewed why the many lepidoptera species are some of the most efficient pollinators.

“Their bodies are built for moving pollen,” she explained, noting at least 156 species of butterflies have been documented in Pennsylvania.

“There is a lot of concern that now our plants are blooming earlier than the pollinators are available to utilize them,” Carman said, which can potentially impact insect survival.

In addition to sipping nectars, butterflies and moths feed on a variety of what might be considered “distasteful” items, including rotting fruit, mud puddles, damp soils, carrion, dung, urine, decaying fungi, aphid honeydew and human perspiration.

The certified pollinator garden website and others offer extensive lists of the most useful plants for supporting insect life cycles. Some are perennials like milkweeds and goldenrod, asters, mountain mint, bergamot, butterfly weed, Joe Pye weed, wild blue phlox and white oak and pignut hickory trees.

While butterfly bushes are extremely popular in today’s gardens, they are non-native and not approved for inclusion in certified garden plantings.

Both Schmotzer and Carman said it is not necessary to have a sprawling garden or large lot to develop a certified pollinator garden. Even a small side yard may offer adequate space.

Potted plants and underplanting can enhance use of limited space in providing the numbers and kinds of plants required.

Judy Dippner has been a master gardener for eight years, and participated in the seminar and tour primarily to see how others are using native plants in their gardens.

“I grew plants as a kid; it’s a lifelong love,” she said of gardening at her Red Lion home. While she grows some vegetables, perennial and annual florals are her primary interest. She avoids cutting many blooms to bring inside, preferring to leave them in place for pollinator support.

“I’ve been starting seeds for the gardens at Rudy Park for about six years,” Dippner said. It’s one of her community activities as a master gardener.

She starts most of the seedlings in her kitchen, then grows them under plant lights until they are large enough to set out in the numerous gardens at the county park, as well as for her own use.

John Kreiser traveled from his home in Annville, Lebanon County, to attend the seminar and tour.

“I want to go back to natives,” he said, of areas on his land where trees have died from invasive insects and invasive weeds have sprung up.

His 1-1/2-acre garden area does have some non-natives that he wants to retain, while adding native species as he develops the property.

“I’ve always liked plants, so I started taking some of the Penn State Extension classes,” Kreiser said. “This is my first year. I’m just getting started. I’m retired now and I have time,”

Individuals interested in learning more about the master gardener program or developing a certified pollinator garden are encouraged to contact their county Penn State Extension office. Detailed information on applying for pollinator garden certification can be found here.