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 laye r 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.
We'll have our work cut out for us next year if we put in 4 more beds!
Teri
Wow. It looks great.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I wonder where you will be volunteering next year???
Thank you. Yep, we're coming back. We have really enjoyed our time here. Y'all should come for a visit next year.
ReplyDeleteWe will try to make that happen
Delete