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The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. In The Pollinator Victory Garden, environmental horticulturalist, landscape designer, and New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden teacher Kim Eierman offers accessible, actionable information and tips for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals.
Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators.
But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators.
With The Pollinator Victory Garden, learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming.
Perfect for beginner to intermediate gardeners, this guide offers a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you:
- The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival
- How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession
- Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one
- Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals
- Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives
- A Pollinator Victory Garden checklist to help you plan and implement the steps needed to have a thriving pollinator garden
- Plant lists of native tree and shrub species organized by pollinator type and bloom time
The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.
