Whether pollinator-friendly gardening sounds daunting or adventurous, it is in reality quite a simple and do-able task. By making an urban garden, regardless of its size, a welcoming place for insects and animals, you are helping to preserve essential pollinators, which in turn will help to make any garden thrive. The urban environment is not always best suited to pollinators, but by providing suitable nesting habitat and planting a garden focused on supplying their needs is one step in the right direction.
Why are pollinators essential to an urban garden?
You may not always be able to observe pollinators in a garden, yard, or green space, but they are constantly present, and are actually working to your advantage. Not only are pollinators, such as bees, wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, bats an important part of the natural environment, but they also benefit us by their services to plants. As a group they pollinate fruits, vegetables, and flowers, both wild and domesticated, making plants healthier and more likely to produce a better quality harvest. The presence of pollinators in the urban garden can only be positive. Some solitary bees, for example nest in the ground, other types nest in holes in wood or trees, in an urban environment where suitable nesting habitat is scarce or in decline the use of solitary bee houses will greatly assist our pollinators.
Worldwide evidence shows that pollinator populations are declining, especially that of the honeybee. Not all the particular reasons are known, because the decline could be due to many factors, including the destruction of habitat. By creating attractive environments for pollinators in an urban setting you can provide essentialhabitats for these insects and birds. Habitats may not be widely available in a setting such as a new subdivision, unless otherwise provided or helped to develop. Pollinators, such as bumble bees and butterflies, are also very interesting to observe, and when you foster a pleasant pollinator-friendly garden you can experience a piece of pure, wild nature in your own backyard.
At www.creativewoodcraft.co.nz we offer a wide range of habitat and products to assist our native pollinators in an urban environment.
Replies