Pollinator Garden

When we arrived at the fish hatchery in mid-May the staff had a list of projects for us to tackle.  We like that!  We like to get organized and plan for the months ahead.

One of our projects was to put in a pollinator garden.  Even though “creating a pollinator garden” was on our original list of projects, there wasn’t a lot of helpful information such as size, types of plants, where exactly to put the garden, etc.  So, this project was talked about and discussed for a few weeks which put us into late June before we started it.

After all the basic questions were answered, the first step was to mark the boundaries.

We were not going to use weed mat under the plants because there are certain types of bees that burrow into the soil.  So, killing all the grass was necessary.

We probably picked the hottest day of the year to dig out all the dead grass.

We were told we had about a $350 budget that was money left over from the disbanded Friends group.  We found these beautiful quartz cobblestones at the local hardware store.  They cost almost half of our budget, but they are so pretty I really wanted to get them.  Mark did a great job getting them even.

We got out most of the dead grass and roots and raked it smooth.

Next up – and the fun part - buying the plants.  We went to a local garden center, grabbed a wagon and spent about 2 hours walking around to see what plants had the most bees on them.  Those were the plants we bought!

We did great purchasing enough perennials to fill the new bed.  We set them all out and started digging holes.

Everything got a good watering.

It looks great!  A heavy layer of mulch was added to keep the weeds out and moisture in.

It looks so good the staff wants 2-5 more identical beds.  A gift card was given to us by the Friends group of another fish hatchery.  Bed #2 is started.  I don’t know if we will have time this year to complete #2.  Beds 3-6 will be something to look forward to next year.

After a month the garden has really filled in.

We'll have our work cut out for us next year if we put in 4 more beds!

Teri