Show #30/7704. Attracting Pollinators With Containers
Summary of Show
Topic Of Pollinators - Important
Eric thinks the TOPIC OF POLLINATORS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Every decade that goes by there's decline across many, many pollinator species. And we know intuitively that pollinators are important. They affect literally every aspect of our lives. Pamela wholeheartedly agrees. She's written 13 books, all of those are books on gardening but considers this the most important because it's the only one on this topic, all the other books are on gardening.
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Best Pollinator Plants - Depends On In The Ground vs. Working On A Deck
Eric asks, depending upon what part of the country someone lives in, there will be different pollinators that could be attracted to a garden. How do we go about discovering which plants work best for us? Pamela says if talking about planting them IN THE GROUND, at that point she recommends natives because those plants are going to be the ones that are best adapted to your particular pollinators. If you're working ON A DECK like she is, she uses annual flowers. Pamela has tried perennials, tried natives, and since her living room is right there, she wants something that blooms the entire time.
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Does The Structural Standpoint Effect The Bloom Of A Flower
Eric wonders if there is anything Pamela would recommend from a STRUCTURAL STANDPOINT with the BLOOM OF A FLOWER that would lend itself to being better for pollinators? Pamela points out one particular plant, it has a long tube. Hummingbirds have a beak. Their beak fits right in there. As well, butterflies have something called a proboscis. They can unfurl that and put it in here to get pollen. That's a great thing. When the flower really opens, look what's in the middle.
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Pamela’s Seven Favorite Pollinator Plants
Eric loves benefiting from Pamela's experience. She's done so much work figuring out the plants that are great for pollinators. He would like to talk about specific plants that are particularly great for that application. Pamela will show her SEVEN FAVORITES. She's looking for plants that are great pollinators, but also will last all season. One is zinnia, it's incredible for all three of the pollinators that we're talking about. She's just not sure if it lasts all season. Some have and some haven't. So it's not as dependable as some of the rest.
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Some Pamela Combinations Look Like A Globe Of Flowers
Eric thinks Pamela does a wonderful job with combinations. In many cases her containers look like an entire GLOBE OF FLOWERS. They're so full. Please explain how you're able to achieve that effect. Pamela shows us one window box that's not just planted in the top, it's also planted in the sides. And you do that with a window box that has holes in the side. It's called a side planted window box and it's very flexible.
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Some Of Pamela’s All Time Favorite Designs
Eric asks Pamela - Over all the years of putting together different container designs, there must be certain ones that really stick out in her mind as her ALL TIME FAVORITES. Let's talk about some of those. In terms of butterflies, her very, very favorite one includes all different kinds of annuals in pastel colors, showing you don't always have to have bright colors. And it was actually loaded with pollinators. Eric would like to talk about the plants used.
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Containers With Just One Plant
Pamela says even if you have a container with just ONE PLANT in it, which we have shown, then you're going to get pollinators. If you put a group of five together, you're going to get more pollinators.
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Window Boxes
Pamela loves WINDOW BOXES because you can use them on a railing, or you can actually use them underneath a window. Pamela shows us one that is planted with California daisies in the top, then alternate lantana as well as petunias in the side and just tuck them in.
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Plants That Last All Season
Pamela shows us another container where she put zinnias in the top. She's looking for PLANTS THAT LAST ALL SEASON and calls those her blue ribbon plants. With this one, the zinnias planted in the top did not make it all season.
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Container With Bright Colors
Another CONTAINER HAS BRIGHT COLORS once again, and this is another that's simple. Celosia at the base, then at the top angelonia. Pamela also has marigolds, big double marigolds do not attract pollinators. There's no room for them to get in. But then she has wax begonias, and creeping jenny everywhere. Even though creeping jenny doesn't attract pollinators, it's an attractive lime green accent down the side of the pot.
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Using Larger Pots
When working with ceramic pots or, really any pots, the LARGER THE POT, the longer the plants are going to last. This container was a 13-inch wide pot that Pamela planted with pentas and plumbago.
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Advantages Of Soilless Media
Eric notes - In containers we're using a SOILLESS MEDIA unlike the garden. He lives in Georgia and the roots of the plants basically have to spread out more laterally because they're going to hit the clay layer at some point in time. In a giant container, that's not the case.
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Rebuilding The Populations Of Pollinators
Eric thanks Pamela, we've had so much fun talking containers and pollinators. It's always wonderful to spend the day with you. And he's wondering, before we leave if there is any advice or thoughts Pamela might have for the home gardener as far as what they can do to help REBUILD THE POPULATIONS OF POLLINATORS. Pamela is sure everybody out there is aware of the plight of the monarch butterflies. We hear a lot about that. But this problem is occurring with all the pollinators.
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Show #30/7704. Attracting Pollinators With Containers
Transcript of Show
Pollinators impact every aspect of our lives and in this episode we take a look at how to maximize their success in containers. GardenSMART has visited Pamela Crawford's container gardens many times because we have long admired her work as a designer and a plants-woman. She's an award-winning author who has published books on container gardening spanning two decades.
Her latest book, “Container Gardens For Butterflies” is focused on using container gardens to attract and sustain pollinators. Pamela has painstakingly researched the best container plants for pollinators and arranged them into beautiful combinations that will elevate any space and encourage our winged friends to visit. In this episode Pamela shares what we need to know to make the most of every planting.
Eric welcomes Pamela back to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Pamela in turn thanks GardenSMART for including her. She's more excited about this book and topic than anything she's ever done. Every time Pamela publishes a new book Eric is excited to see it. And this one is particularly exciting. She spent over three decades working on pollinator plants and learning what works in the garden. Eric thinks the TOPIC OF POLLINATORS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Every decade that goes by there's decline across many, many pollinator species. And we know intuitively that pollinators are important. They affect literally every aspect of our lives. Pamela wholeheartedly agrees. She's written 13 books, all of those are books on gardening but considers this the most important because it's the only one on this topic, all the other books are on gardening. She thinks they're wonderful books but this is actually talking about saving a creature in our environment.
Eric agrees, outside of all the wonderful benefits of saving pollinators, they also bring so much interest to the garden. He loves seeing butterflies and bumblebees, hummingbirds, really all the creatures that are attracted to the landscape when we introduce pollinator friendly plants. Pamela didn't realize how much she was going to make friends with these little things. There must be, at least, one around right now. They work together. She can be fertilizing, deadheading and watering, and they will get her out of her way a little bit or if needed Pamela will get out of their way a little bit.
Eric remembers Pamela telling him, at one point last year, that she had put together some wonderful containers but one thing she had noticed was you didn't see any pollinators. Correct, it looked great but had zero pollinators. At that point she thought, well, this is a new location, I'm in the middle of a dense forest, maybe they don't have any pollinators here. So the next year she did the exact opposite and planted everything with pollinator plants and her containers were absolutely loaded with pollinators. This year, what she has tried to do is figure out, okay, I know which plants work, let's figure out which plants are easiest to take care of, last the longest and that's what we're talking about today.
Eric asks, depending upon what part of the country someone lives in, there will be different pollinators that could be attracted to a garden. How do we go about discovering which plants work best for us? Pamela says if talking about planting them IN THE GROUND, at that point she recommends natives because those plants are going to be the ones that are best adapted to your particular pollinators. If you're working ON A DECK like she is, she uses annual flowers. Pamela has tried perennials, tried natives, and since her living room is right there, she wants something that blooms the entire time. So she's looking for annuals she can plant in May that will keep going all the way through the first frost. That's what she looked for and that's what she is using and it's worked really, really well.
Eric wonders if there is anything Pamela would recommend from a STRUCTURAL STANDPOINT with the BLOOM OF A FLOWER that would lend itself to being better for pollinators? Pamela points out one particular plant, it has a long tube. Hummingbirds have a beak. Their beak fits right in there. As well, butterflies have something called a proboscis. They can unfurl that and put it in here to get pollen. That's a great thing. When the flower really opens, look what's in the middle. See all that yellow? Every one of those little florets has pollen in it. What they can't get into is something like a double flower, a really dense flower. That doesn't work. Eric notes, a lot of what, as gardeners, we would perceive as improvements in plants, double flowering as an example, many, many plants that are genetically modified end up being sterile therefore are not good for pollinators. Pamela agrees, so some of it is trial and error. She hasn't found any salvias that pollinators have not been attracted to. Not so for begonias. She found some. Occasionally you might get one that doesn't, but most of the time they're going to work really, really well.
Eric loves benefiting from Pamela's experience. She's done so much work figuring out the plants that are great for pollinators. He would like to talk about specific plants that are particularly great for that application. Pamela will show her SEVEN FAVORITES. She's looking for plants that are great pollinators, but also will last all season. One is zinnia, it's incredible for all three of the pollinators that we're talking about. She's just not sure if it lasts all season. Some have and some haven't. So it's not as dependable as some of the rest. However, the pentas have been around forever and will last all season. Pamela has done better with ones that are branded, meaning that when you see it at the store, it has a name of a grower on it so that you know that it's a really good quality plant. They do better. Pentas do really well. Another is wax begonia TopHat begonia is about four times larger than the little wax begonias and it also gets about four times as many pollinators coming to it. One may need to order it one online. Pamela found it at a garden center, but it's worth the wait if you do need order online. And, it's a beautiful plant. Of course, lantana is just fabulous. All three pollinators are very happy with them, they're swarming this plant some days. Pamela added scaevola because she didn't want to start disregarding plants. If you look at scaevola, it's going to attract a medium amount of pollinators. But she likes its' trailing habit, which works particularly well with all her baskets. Eric notices another plant Pamela likes to use in containers and is great for pollinators - sunflowers. And there are many wonderful new cultivars out there. Pamela agrees, one day she was going through the garden center and saw the perfect sunflower because it was small and was covered with smaller blooms. So she bought it. It’s name is SunBelievable Brown Eyed Girl. It blooms all the time, like 50 blooms at once, probably has had a thousand blooms and bloomed for a full four months. Eric comments, some of these new cultivars take a minute to find their way to the garden centers so online shopping is a great way to bring those in. And some of them are well worth the effort.
Eric thinks Pamela does a wonderful job with combinations. In many cases her containers look like an entire GLOBE OF FLOWERS. They're so full. Please explain how you're able to achieve that effect. Pamela shows us one window box that's not just planted in the top, it's also planted in the sides. And you do that with a window box that has holes in the side. It's called a side planted window box and it's very flexible. One can just dip the root ball in water, slide them in and then plant the top. There's something about the amount of air that gets in through the cocoa fiber that puts them in hyper growth. But one in particular is seven, eight months old and it keeps going and going and just getting better. They also come in round sizes. The round sizes come with kits that make it possible to put them on a post, a post that goes in the ground or a post that goes inside a pot. Both provide almost a topiary type effect. And those have been the single best way to get a lot of pollinators because there are so many plants in the container. And for small spaces like decks and patios where you're really trying to maximize the color impact that you can get from planting, being able to go vertical provides a whole new plane to work with.
Eric wonders how long the coconut liner lasts? Do they need to be changed out every year? Pamela does change it every year. Some people reuse them, Pamela just likes starting fresh and clean because the ones that are used are just kind of dirty on the inside, just like you would expect. You can't really wash them, she hasn't tried to put one in the washing machine and doesn't think that would work great anyway. So she just gets a new liner every year.
Eric asks Pamela - Over all the years of putting together different container designs, there must be certain ones that really stick out in her mind as ALL TIME FAVORITES. Let's talk about some of those. In terms of butterflies, her very, very favorite one includes all different kinds of annuals in pastel colors, showing you don't always have to have bright colors. And it was actually loaded with pollinators. Eric would like to talk about the plants used. Pamela used angelonia, also lantana, then torenia, and some Dichondra “Silver Falls," which is just there for the leaf. And then we have this huge pink dracaena, which is included for its' leaves. Eric thinks the dracaena is a great impact plant for a container. You kind of need that vertical pop to center the planter. Pamela agrees, she calls this butterfly buffet. Everything she put in it attracts pollinators. It was loaded the first day. After the first freeze was the only time when they stopped coming. Another planter is a combination of celosia, which we haven't talked about today. Celosia is a great plant. This is Celosia Intenz, which is one of her favorites. It also has Torenia in it, as well as New Guinea impatiens with a variegated leaf, which are fabulous, and then scaevola. Eric wonders, do the pollinators like New Guinea Impatiens? Pamela says it depends on which batch you get. One had sunpatiens and they loved it. She got sunpatiens again this year for other pots, and pollinators go to it a little bit, but they're not anywhere near as voracious as they were last summer. So it's just something about the breeding process. Eric assumes that some years plants produce more pollen. The plants that do produce more pollen are going to naturally attract more pollinators. The pollinators, of course, know exactly what they're looking for.
Pamela says even if you have a container with just ONE PLANT in it, which we have shown, then you're going to get pollinators. If you put a group of five together, you're going to get more pollinators. But if you have something like the butterfly buffet where all the plants are right next to each other, you're going to get even more. Eric thinks that's a great tip and it also makes for a particularly dynamic container.
Pamela loves WINDOW BOXES because you can use them on a railing, or you can actually use them underneath a window. Pamela shows us one that is planted with California daisies in the top, then alternate lantana as well as petunias in the side and just tuck them in. The top of the pot has cleomes, and they love that one. In another container she used cleomes again. It is another break the rules and see what happens container. It has pastel colors. She typically likes bright colors but this one is just fine and includes different wax begonias and scaevola. Eric thinks it’s a wonderful combination. Pamela believes we don't always have to make it super complicated. A lot of this has to do with what you want to do. When you go to the garden center which plants do you really like because you're making it for the pollinators and for you.
Pamela shows us another container and it is bright. She knows Eric will say that it's a Pamela planter. It has hot orange geraniums mixed with bright colors of calibrachoa and petunias.
Another planter, a window box, once again, every single plant in it is a pollinator favorite. Pamela points out the Bat-Faced Cupheas. She doesn't use them more because they only last about three months, but after she saw how the pollinators went for them this year, she's going to get some more. And then the Golden Shrimp Plant, it is not a favorite of butterflies and bees, but the hummingbirds conquer their fears because they're terrified of almost everything, but will swoop down and go to the golden shrimp plant. Lantana is great for all the pollinators. With Torenia, the butterflies will go there occasionally, but the bumblebees just love it. They can fit their whole little bodies inside the flower and they love that. Eric thinks it's a great spiller for a container too. Especially for a window box.
Pamela shows us another container where she put zinnias in the top. She's looking for PLANTS THAT LAST ALL SEASON and calls those her blue ribbon plants. With this one, the zinnias planted in the top did not make it all season. So she first planted the zinnias then melampodium, which does well, then begonias and torenia. Eric notes oftentimes with feature plants, they can be changed out mid-season if we want to go with something else that's going to give us an extended season of bloom. And that is exactly what Pamela did with this container.
Another CONTAINER HAS BRIGHT COLORS once again, and this is another that's simple. Celosia at the base, then at the top angelonia. Pamela also has marigolds, big double marigolds do not attract pollinators. There's no room for them to get in. But then she has wax begonias, and creeping jenny everywhere. Even though creeping jenny doesn't attract pollinators, it's an attractive lime green accent down the side of the pot. The double marigolds are a really good example of what happens with improvements and hybridization. And, that can sometimes create trial and error in that we've got to just see what works. Many native plants have been hybridized, think of echinaceas, there are double and triple pom-pom style echinaceas that are not great for pollinators. Oftentimes going back to more of the plant in its original form is going to give us more success with pollinators.
When working with ceramic pots or, really any pots, the LARGER THE POT, the longer the plants are going to last. This container was a 13-inch wide pot that Pamela planted with pentas and plumbago. It lasted for about four months. Pamela plants a lot of bowls just because she likes the shape. But bowls are not going to provide enough soil volume. They don’t hold enough for the plants to last all season. But she loves them, they're fast and dirty. Plant it, it looks good the first day. One is just a simple blue bowl planted with angelonia, celosia, echinacea, and vinca. And this is where she learned that some echinaceas do not attract pollinators.
Pamela shows us another container grouping. These are the size pots she likes. One is a full 24 inches across. The canna lilies lasted all season long because they had room, just like in nature, for their roots to keep going and going and going. This was simple, but it was effective for the butterflies. She had the celosia in small pots. Those pots were ornate so she wanted simple plantings, and these really, really worked.
Eric notes - In containers we're using a SOILLESS MEDIA unlike the garden. He lives in Georgia and the roots of the plants basically have to spread out more laterally because they're going to hit the clay layer at some point in time. In a giant container, that's not the case. With the soilless media the roots can go all the way down to the bottom which is a great way to have the container conserve water and why the big containers have way more root volume. Oftentimes Eric sees a higher degree of performance out of plants that are put in large containers over ones that he puts in the ground. Pamela agrees, they have the perfect soil mix in the pot.
Eric thanks Pamela, we've had so much fun talking containers and pollinators. It's always wonderful to spend the day with you. And he's wondering, before we leave if there is any advice or thoughts Pamela might have for the home gardener as far as what they can do to help REBUILD THE POPULATIONS OF POLLINATORS. Pamela is sure everybody out there is aware of the plight of the monarch butterflies. We hear a lot about that. But this problem is occurring with all the pollinators. We have over 20 species of both butterflies and hummingbirds that are now endangered. And, on top of that, and this really upsets Pamela, since 1990, we have lost 90% of our bumblebees. Entomologists are saying that the hope is with the home gardener which means if everyone just goes out and plants a few pots, we have the power to bring these pollinators back. Eric totally agrees and there's so much in the way of the native population of flowering plants that just is lost to large commercial agriculture, or to developments. We love our shopping malls, but that all comes at a cost to the pollinators.
It’s so much fun exploring ways to bring wildlife right to our doorstep with beautiful container combinations. It’s something we all can do, we just need to do our part and plant pollinators. Pamela agrees and, importantly, we can save them. Thank you, Pamela.
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