pollinator garden – Windtree Bee

August 26, 2022August 26, 2022

We have honey! and flowers!!

The Summer 2022 honey harvest has been filtered, bottled, labeled, and is ready for sale!! As always, its taste is unique to this particular summer and we won’t have it for long. Every year, we sell out, so if you want it — please stop by our market table soon!

We didn’t enter our honey in the State Fair this year because we were moving our daughters into college. Both of them are at school now, which means I’ll need to muddle through Instagram solo now. Hahaha! 😉

Ellie is at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC

After a slow start, the flower garden I planted for the bees is finally blooming. This means, for a short time only, I’ll have beautiful Mason jar bouquets for sale at the market.

I’m not a professional flower grower, seller, or arranger. But I get so much joy out of my tiny flower garden. It’s full of pollinators — honeybees (of course), bumble bees, moths, and butterflies. Saw my first monarch of the season today, which made me happy!

Our Mason jar bouquets have zinnias in them. That’s it. But they’re pretty and every jar you buy supports our queens and their hives — remember Elphaba, Buffy, Cleo, Gaia, Tempest, and the rest? #supportlocalroyalty 😀

Hope to see you tomorrow at the Hereford Farm Market! We’ll be across from The Contented Rooster. Look for our Windtree Bee Banner! (Mandi has the “Hats & Honey” banner, but won’t be there tomorrow.)

On sale for a limited time only! Don’t wait to buy your jar!!

July 9, 2021

Pollinator Gardens

Master Gardener Cara Bonner recently gave me a tour of Baltimore County’s Demo Garden. If you haven’t been yet, you should go! The demo garden is open to the public year-round and access is free. No dogs, shut the gate behind you, sign the guest book, and then stroll around for inspiration and ideas.

Baltimore County’s Center for Maryland Agriculture

Inside the demo garden are different themed areas. My two favorites were the Pollinator Garden and the Monarch Waystation. Each area has its own mailbox with information and handouts inside.

The Pollinator Garden mailbox has information sheets about the plants that are in the garden, common Maryland pollinators, and tips for planting your own pollinator garden at home. Popular flower choices are zinnias, black-eyed Susans, and sunflowers. You can also plant milkweed for the monarchs, salvia for honeybees and hummingbirds, and phlox for butterflies and hummingbirds. Remember, no pesticides!! A lawn that looks like AstroTurf is not only unnatural, it’s a desert wasteland to pollinators. But a lawn full of clover looks charming and is wonderful for the bees!

My own pollinator garden

After visiting the pollinator garden down at the Ag Center, I was inspired to plant my own. Here’s what’s in it:

Yellow Yarrow (Achillea)
Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia)
Dwarf Sneezeweed (Helenium)
Catmint (Nepeta)
Salvia
Phlox
Bee Balm

They’re all perennials, so hopefully they’ll come back next year.

Baltimore County’s Master Gardener Demo Garden is in Cockeysville — 1114 Shawan Road
For more information on pollinator gardens and invertebrate conservation, visit the Xerces Society

TREES FOR BEES

Central Maryland Beekeepers Association had a journeyman beekeeper from Georgia as its guest speaker this month. Jimmy Gatt talked about why trees are among the best things you can plant for honeybees. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the meeting, but CMBA shared Jimmy’s list of trees, shrubs and forbs with me. I’m sharing it below with their permission. (What’s a forb? Forbs are generally broad-leafed flowering plants that are not grasses or woody plants like trees and shrubs.)

Trees:
Basswood (Tilia Americana)
Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)
Devil’s walking stick (Aralia spins)
Franklin’s tree (Franklinia alatamaha)
Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra)
Winged sumac (Rhus copallinum) — highly recommended
Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)

Shrubs:
Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia)
Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus)
Shrubby St. John’s wort (Hypericum prolificum)
New Jersey Tea (Ceoanthus americanus)
Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora)
Meadowswet (Spirea alba)

Forbs:
Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)
Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
Clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum)

CMBA’s next membership meeting is at the Ag Center — August 3rd from 5:00-9:00 p.m. Join the club and then tour the Demo Garden! 🙂

August 26, 2019April 2, 2020

Summer Flower Bouquets

Summer is winding down! Every week I wonder how many more blooms I’ll get this season. So far, I’ve made 26 bouquets (19 large; 7 small). Not a lot, but it’s my first summer growing cutting flowers. I’ve been experimenting and want to keep it fun. I probably could have produced more but:

I intentionally left lots of flowers in the garden for the bees and butterflies. My pollinator garden is working! Butterflies, including monarchs; bumble bees, wasps (not necessarily welcome, but allowed), and our beloved honey bees have all been busy in the garden.
I was lazy about “succession planting.” After getting my first batch of flowers in the ground, I never got around to planting anything else.
I made some mistakes about the types of flowers I planted. Sunflowers make me happy, but they’re tall and block a lot of light. Plus, they aren’t “cut and come again.” They’re “one and done.” The cosmos were a bust. I’m not even sure I’ll do cosmos next year, regardless of the species. I like hardier looking flowers. I’ll repeat the Zinnias (both the giants and the green envy). Ditto for the Black Eyed Susans. In fact, I’d love to try other kinds: Cappuccino, Cherokee Sunset, Cherry Brandy… I’ll do marigolds again, because I love them, but need to find a different, LARGER variety. Next year, I’m wondering if I might be able to plant some late blooming, fall flowers, but what? Dahlias intimidate me. Goldenrod is great for bees, but not necessarily honey. I’ll have to do more research! In the meantime…

ENJOY THE LAST FEW DAYS OF SUMMER!

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Jill and Craig have hundreds of blooms and tens of thousands of bees on their one acre patch of land in north Baltimore County. Come see them at the Hereford Farmers Market (Sept 14), the Perry Hall library (Sept 28), and the Hereford Fall Fest (Oct 19/20).