Herb Walks with Lori Snyder

Heads up! My wonderful friend and Colleague Lori Snyder is leading 2 hour herb walks this week tonight and tomorrow night. Details are on the Village Vancouver website:

Join Lori Snyder on a herbal medicinal wild food walk. She will identify and share her experiences with practical applications for skin care, food and medicines. Cost per person of $15.00.
Come Wednesday or Thursday evening.

Time: September 4, 5, 2013 from 6:30pm to 8pm
Location: Columbia St. and West 1st ave @ the Pond

Ground Cover for Bumble Bees

 I headed to VanDusen Gardens for inspiration on native ground cover plants that would be good for bumble bees. You don't even have to go inside the garden to find part of the Cascadia garden planted around the entrance with fabulous plants that fit the bill. This sedum is a good waterwise solution for a border plant.

 There are lots of great kinds of sedum for bees. This one is blooming a lot earlier than the varieties I'm familiar with.

 You can see hear how it will fill this border in nicely.

One of the EYA gardeners suggested Kinnikinik and I saw her eyes light up when she knew she'd hit on a great ground cover plant. The low growing berries are great for bees, including the native strawberries.

 I have tried so many times to grow nodding onion from seed. Next year I'm just going to invest in the plants.

 Wouldn't this be great in the meadow? And you can eat these onions!

 This is a good variety of salal that appears to grow low to the ground. I believe the plants I've mentioned above should all be good for rooftop gardens as well.

 In terms of higher plants, Hartley also mentioned snowberry, which does attract a lot of bees. My neighbor has one that is quite tall (4-6 ft) that grows along her fence under a fir tree.

Other taller native bee plants include aquilegia or columbines. You can plant the one that is native to BC and have fun planting the non native ones to see which pollinators are attracted to the blossoms. The same goes for the bleeding heart varieties. Solomon's seal, and native cranesbill geraniums are good too.

When in doubt, plant berries! Native blackberries do creep along the ground on the edge of the forest floor. Salmonberries and thimble berries are great native bee plants. The advantage of most of these plants is that they can also survive in dappled shade and some can even do well in the shadiest parts of your garden. You just have to experiment to see if they like the spot you choose for them. Sometimes it takes two or more years for native plants to really establish themselves, but it is so worth the extra time and trouble to see them flourish and feed the native bees.

Oak Meadows Bee Garden

 The Environmental Youth Alliance is creating a pollinator corridor in Vancouver. One of the sites is here at Oak Meadow Park. This is a perfect place for native plants that bumble bees love.

 Erin Udal is working with a group of volunteers to monitor bee activity in Vancouver from June through September. This summer the EYA is also creating new bee gardens in four locations.

The placing of the pots: an important and serious ritual.

 The plants they chose include Oregon grape, currants, roses, camas lilies, lily of the valley, brown-eyed Susans, lupins and foxgloves.

There's also a bee nesting site. This square is filled with the kind of soil that ground-dwelling bees tunnel into to make their nests. The soil will be left undisturbed so the bees can do their thing without humans blundering in and digging up their homes.

 Here are the fabulous diggin' women who edged the garden and planted the bushes and bulbs.

 The plants will bush out and fill up the space. In the mean time we were tossing around some ideas for ground cover to keep out the weeds and provide even more blossoms.

Thanks so much to the folks at EYA for supporting our bees!

Tips on Growing Native Plants in Vancouver

This past Thursday evening as the August sun was creating patterns of shadown in the MOP Garden, we had the final talk in a series created between MOPARRC and Evergreen. The speaker was Andrew Appleton, who is the Regional Project Manager of Evergreen in Vancouver. Evergreen is an organization that creates, supports and implements urban greening projects and school greening projects. Andrew has years of experience ripping out invasive species and planting native plants in areas such as Jericho Park, and Still Creek in the Grandview cut. He gave us some great advice on which native plants good to plant inVancouver and how to deal with some of those nasty invasive species in our gardens.

First of all, Andrew explained that it takes about three years to establish many native plants. In the first years they may look less than robust, but you just have to have patience and faith that they will eventually look healthy. Of course, you have to match the plant with the right location in your garden, and sometimes even a couple of feet can make all the difference. Evergreen seeks to plant small areas with a diversity of species, a community of plants that work well together to promote biodiversity.

With the help of volunteers from the community they install shade plants, flowers and berries, bushes and trees. Some favorites include Red Flowering Currant (be sure you get the native Ribes sanguineum as the nurseries will only have cultivars in stock), Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii), Pacific Ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus), Oval Leaf Blueberries, Red Osier Dogwood, Rosa nutkana and bald-hipped roses (Rosa gymnocarpa). The three most popular ground covers are Fringe Cup (Tellumia), Piggy Back Plant (Tolmea) and Foam Flower (Tiarella).

For some of the troublesome invasive plants such as lamium and goutweed, Andrew recommends putting down sheet mulch--cardboard or paper and bark mulch and digging right through those layers to do your planting. Some of the more tenacious plants like broom require special treatment--removal with root wrenches and vigilant removal of any seedlings because the seeds are viable for up to 30 years. One of the plants that was just declared a noxious weed is yellow flag iris, a European transplant that colonizes bogs with its huge root systems. Evergreen holds work parties where volunteers don rubber boots and dig out the iris rhizomes.

Once native plants are established they require less water and care than exotic plants and they support the native birds, insects and specific pollinators. Urban environments often contain a variety of cultivars which often contribute to biodiversity, but a wide variety of native plants makes for healthier city ecosystems. Climate changes mean that Andrew keeps an eye on the micro-climates Evergreen targets for their restoration projects. He says they no longer plant Red Cedar, our provincial tree because it has become generally too dry to have a successful survival rate here. Andrew also took a look at the native garden at the MOP. One plant that he says is not doing too well because it needs more water is our elderberry tree but our Arbutus tree and Ocean Spray (holodiscus) are thriving.

Evergreen works with the community and they are always looking for volunteers. They also work with offices and businesses to create team-building exercises with their urban greening projects. If you are interesting in helping out, check out the Evergreen BC web site. The best way to get a free education is to volunteer. It's good exercise and you can think of it as a form of horticultural therapy! Evergreen supplies the tools and snacks. In fact you can come to Jericho Park this Sunday (August 13) to lend a hand from 9 am to noon.