Heights Native Pollinator Path
“Garden as if life depends on it”—Doug Tallamy, entomologist/author
Native plants are Beautiful, Resilient, and Essential for a healthy ecosystem!
Heights Native Pollinator Path, a program of Friends of Heights Parks, is an informal group of nature lovers that started in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. But all are welcome, wherever you are! Nature knows no political boundaries. Join our Facebook group to share your experiences with native plants and their visitors!
We’re gardening in our own yards with plants native to our region in hopes of improving habitat for native wildlife so vital to the health of our planet. Insect and bird populations are plummeting, which threatens human survival as well.
We’re planting front yard and tree lawn gardens, small and large, to demonstrate the beauty and resilience of native species that need no soil improvement, fertilizers, or herbicides.
This 5-minute video explains how to start a pollinator path in your neighborhood:
How to begin
In order not to be overwhelmed, start with a small garden of 100% native plants app. 3’ x 4’ feet large, and increase it each year. Before and after pictures of some of our gardens are here, and a map of all of the gardens so far is here.
A list of NE Ohio native plant nurseries is here.
Email us your address and a picture, if possible, if you’d like your front yard garden to be on the map. (You may have a garden of native plants in your back yard, but the goal of our project is to demonstrate using ecological gardening in an accessible, public way.)
Gardens in public spaces are also welcome!
Suggested guidelines to get started are here. Kate Brandes of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center in Pennsylvania has a helpful set of suggested companion plantings, here.
Gardens should be at least 75% native plants that are straight species, not cultivars, to benefit insects and birds. (Doug Tallamy explains the different ecosystem benefits of straight species versus cultivars.)
Order a sign from friendsofheightsparks@gmail.com
Educating ourselves and others
Watch these videos by local NE Ohio nature lovers gardening with native species:
Why plant a Native Pollinator garden, anyway?
There is a growing awareness (no pun intended, really!) that we can improve the health of the planet by planting species native to our eco-region. How does this work?
We plant forsythia, which is from East Asia. What a perfect plant! Nothing eats its leaves, and it attracts no pollinators to its beautiful flowers each spring. What is wrong with that? What is wrong, from nature’s point of view, is that it provides no ecological benefit. We plant it strictly for our own enjoyment. There are no North American insects or birds that benefit from this species. (But there probably are in East Asia!)
If we plant serviceberry, a North American shrub or tree, the early spring flowers attract a host of pollinating insects. In turn the insects feed the birds. Nesting birds exclusively feed insects to their young, so insects are very important. In June, serviceberry provides delicious berries that birds and small mammals eat.
This is a very small example of the benefit of planting native species. As our growing season unfolds different flowering plants attract different insects. You’ve probably heard about the “insect apocalypse” or just noticed that you just don’t have to clean your windshield from bug goop when you travel. But we need insects, unpleasant as some may be. Life on earth cannot be sustained without them!
Some of us have been choosing native plants over non-natives for this very reason, and when we do plant them we’ve been delighted with the butterflies and other insects that visit them. Hummingbirds, too.
In order to connect fragmented habitat we’ve enlisted neighbors to plant natives too. And that is how the Heights Native Pollinator Path began. People think that native species, or “wildflowers,” create an unkempt garden. Far from it. You can simply substitute natives and have a quite conventional looking garden if that’s what you want.
To spread the concept of pathways and corridors for insects we install signs. They’re awfully pretty, and they let people know that the gardener is gardening with nature.
It’s very tempting to go to the garden center and purchase plants that are already blooming. But if you’re not planting native species, you’re creating a pretty garden but you’re not on the Heights Native Pollinator Path! Research is showing that native species provide more nutrition than introduced species, in general. Let’s not feed insects junk food that is attractive but not nutritious.
For more information, please read anything by Doug Tallamy or watch one of his videos