Fall 

November 

Take a walk around your yard on a sunny day. Notice where sun vs shade fall in your yard, and identify areas with the most sunlight. Get out a shovel an explore soil qualities (sand/clay, rocks, etc). Make sure to dig in below the grass roots, to see what's below the surface. Did you find any worms?

Some plants thrive in areas with more sunlight, while others do better in the shade. Some of the showiest flowering plants are the sun-loving ones. Is there an area in your yard with lots of sunlight where you might build your flower garden? Is your yard very shady, so you want to consider a shade garden? 

Winter

December 

Building on what you learned about the sunlight and soil in your yard last month, it's time to decide on a location. Additional factors to consider: how far from a water source--can you stretch a hose when needed? Carrying water while establishing young plants would be harder work. Decide on the size and shape of your plot (and if you might like to expand the plot to be larger in future years, consider where there is room to grow). If the ground isn't frozen yet, you can put some markers in the ground to show the edges of your plot. Marked edges will help you in the plant-envisioning stage we'll get to dreaming about as winter really sets in.

January It's garden dreaming and planning season! 

Using the information you already gathered about sun and shade in your plot area, explore options in plant and seed catalogues & websites (find links in Where to Buy Plants). You may want to purchase plants in person later in spring, but you can gather information about plant heights, blooming times, sun versus shade needs, and of course colors. Selecting a combination of species that includes spring, early summer, and late summer bloom times allows you to enjoy your flowers and provide resources to pollinators throughout the entire growing season. Think about placing shorter plants at the edge of your plot and taller plants behind them. One delightful winter activity is drawing a rough sketch of your plot with colored pencils or crayons. This doesn't need to be high art to help you plan: a little blob of color gives you the idea. Other considerations: native plants, costs, buying seedlings versus seed--we'll need to get any seed started next month! 

February It's the Wednesday of the year. 

The joy of winter's start has worn off, and we're still too far from spring to celebrate it just yet. But don't despair! We can give ourselves a boost now by gathering together many of the plant seeds, tools, and other supplies we need for our small pollinator plots. Using your plant list and designs from January (and perhaps new inspiration from Doug Tallamy's talk, which you can view here), start ordering some seeds! Johnny's Seeds in Maine is a great place to start. You'll find several other suggestions on our Where to Buy Plants page. Now is also a good time to consider what tools you'll need--will you be starting seeds indoors and need seed starting trays and potting soil? What digging tools will you need to clear grass or other plants from the area you'll be planting? Will you need some low fencing to show people where not to step while small plants are getting established? Of course, this project doesn't have to be expensive–you can create a beautiful and fulfilling pollinator garden without buying a whole lot of stuff. Make a list of tools and supplies you'll need, take inventory of what you already have or can creatively repurpose, things you can borrow from a neighbor, or things you can buy second-hand. Above all, have fun anticipating the work ahead. This month's goal is to get as organized as possible so you can dive into planting seeds or young plants when spring does get here!

April Time to get digging!

This month, it’s that time you’ve been waiting for--time to dig out the space for your small pollinator garden plot! You just need some basic tools to dig, rake, and remove roots. These tools are likely in your collection of the ones you conveniently organized in February. Depending on what was in your small plot location before, your site preparing requirements can be different. Possibly, it’s some combination of the following:

• Was the plot previously lawn? If you smothered the grass with cardboard in March, there is no need to remove the cardboard. The cardboard should be mostly free of ink and tape. The cardboard acts as another organic layer and will continue to keep weeds at bay while it decomposes. Then you add a layer of compost/planting soil. The most economical good quality compost is available at the Lexington Composting Facility. When it is time to plant your new native species, simply cut a hole in the cardboard and plant as usual. It is not recommended that you use a rototiller. That process can bring up the seed bank’s weed seeds and destroy many microbes in the soil.

• Was the plot previously planted? Clear out any standing vegetation, remove the roots, and lightly rake. 

• Was the plot previously bare? Lightly rake the surface, remove any roots that may be exposed. Explore with a spade or shovel how easy or hard it is to dig down several inches. If the soil is very compacted or has many roots running through it, you’ll need to put in a bit more effort.

Now take a look at your soil: is it organic-rich or poor? This website offers some guidance on simple ways to examine your soil to determine your planting conditions and how you might need to augment your soil. Keep this in mind for May and June, when you start planting. You likely won’t need to add soil supplements, but if you really want to here is a good company to order mulch/soil amendments from.

Once you’ve cleared your plot and assessed your soil, cover it up until you get planting next month. Leaving exposed soil sets up a field day for weeds. A layer of cardboard topped off with any composted leaves or soil (to weigh down the cardboard) is an effective and inexpensive way to cover up your plot. But guess what: in addition to providing a safe haven for biodiversity, all that leaf mulch that you let lie in the fall is a great natural weed suppressor! How convenient. Gather around armfuls of this free multi-purpose mulch and spread it over your plot. Enjoy getting your hands in this earth to celebrate Earth Day--April 22!

May Beware the bunnies.

Later this month and into next month, you'll be nestling your young plants into your plot! But first, let's take a moment to think about protecting those tender young shoots from herbivores. Mostly, the rabbits. Our adorable cottontail rabbits are very hungry and very numerous this time of year. They find the fresh leaves of many (but not all) plants delicious. This website describes their preferences in general terms.

Many plants develop tougher stems and other physical defenses (such as prickles and hairy leaves) and chemical defenses (bad tasting) as they grow older, but when they are very small, they devote more energy to simply growing. Plants at this stage are especially vulnerable to being eaten and any loss has a big impact on their survival.

The good news is rabbits are very effectively kept out of an area by low (2-foot) fencing. Temporary fencing that you remove once the plants have been established is a good choice because it's easy to install and not very expensive. Sticks or metal poles work fine for fence posts. You can use what you have on hand. 

An alternative to excluding bunnies from a whole area is setting up tiny fences around your few young plant additions to an area. Called exclosures, you can make them out of coated chicken wire, needing only a wire cutter as a tool. Easy to make, easy to place, easy to remove and reuse for another young plant.

You don't need to put any fencing up until you are ready to get planting, but planning ahead now means you'll be able to protect your precious plants in a few weeks. 

July/August Taking care and taking it in.

All your plants have been in the ground for a few weeks now, spreading their roots, growing new leaves, and possibly blooming their first flowers. You've kept them watered (and to be honest, in July 2021, that didn't require much effort), which is important in this first year as your plants establish. If you've planted native species, well-suited to our local climate, they won't need watering outside of droughts in future years. 

But the ongoing maintenance of weeding begins now! The cardboard mulch, in our example from last month, helps a lot with weed suppression, but some will still find a way in. Removing weeds (AKA "a plant in a place you don't want it") is important to prevent it out-competing your new plantings for resources such as nutrients, water, sunlight, and just plain space to grow. As your plants grow larger over the years, they will hold their own more easily against weeds, but there are always some aggressive ones (especially invasive species such as bittersweet) you will need to keep an eye out for periodically and pull out. Have the rabbits been snipping off branches? Or have you used some of the exclosure tools we described in May?

While you are keeping your eye out for weeds and damage by bunnies, also take the time to enjoy what you've created! If you sit down to observe quietly for a few minutes, what insects have you seen coming to visit any early flowers in your pollinator plot? If you don't have any early flowers yet, take a look at the Pollinator Photo Album, created with submissions from our community members during Pollinator Week in June. By next summer, you should be seeing a lot more blooms as your small plants grow and develop. 

We'd love to see any photos of your pollinator plots you'd like to share (send to lexlivingland@gmail.com) and even add your plot to Homegrown National Park. Be a part of this ecological transformation! 

Fall is the perfect time of year to write down notes about what went well (and why, if you know--such as the abundant rainfall in July & August) and what did not. Maybe you already have ideas for things you'd like to do differently next year, such as adding some new species or trying a different way of keeping out rabbits...or something as bold as establishing a plot in a different location. Or maybe you are saving that planning for winter, when it's time to dream of spring again. Either way, make sure you write down your observations, questions, and ideas with enough detail to be a useful resource later. 

Part of planning for next year's plants and pollinators is to consider how to put your garden to bed for winter. Leaving leaves as a natural mulch in your plot will help improve the soil as the leaves break down but also protect overwintering native bees who may have set up nests just below the soil surface and moth cocoons mixed in with the leaf litter. Firefly larvae live in leaf litter as well. As flowers set seed, some send them away on wind gusts, but other seeds will remain as winter food for birds. Some insects spend their winters in the stems of plants, such as goldenrod stem gall-forming flies. I haven't seen any stem galls on my small goldenrod plants this first year, but hoping they will find the plants next year as they grow larger! Both to feed birds and to save insects in stems, it's helpful to leave dead stalks standing throughout the winter and until temperatures are warming up again. For more on this topic, you can watch a recording of Anna Fialkoff of Wild Seed Project here.