- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

While we might not be seeing as many insects outside right now, stay inside as we look back at how to design a garden that is better suited to attract pollinators.

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I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

We're back here at the Student Farm.

I wanna share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

Today we are at UCO at the John Bartell Pollinator Garden.

And joining me is Dr. Gloria Cadel.

And Dr. Cadel, thank you for inviting us down here to see your pollinator garden.

It's beautiful.

- Thank you for being here.

- So tell me a little bit about the background of establishing this garden.

So it - Had been a dream of mine for many, many years to have a native plant garden on campus.

When I first came to UCO in 1990, I could find hundreds of native plants everywhere around within miles of the campus.

And all of those sites have disappeared.

And so as poly natives started declining, I really wanted to put in a native plant garden on campus.

And then when we built the dawn beds STEM Research and Learning Center here, then I saw that as an opportunity to use a pollinator garden as part of the landscaping here associated with the building.

- You've kind of taken the lab outside, right?

- We have taken the lab outside, yes, we have.

- So tell me a little bit about how this garden is utilized by the university and the students here.

- Okay.

So we have classes that use it.

Many biology classes use it.

Our majors class in biological diversity comes over and does activities in it.

We have plant taxonomy, planetology, entomology classes that will use it.

We also have classes from liberal arts, like environmental ethics that have come to the garden.

We also use it for outreach with K 12.

So we've had middle school students come over and do activities where they observe pollinators to the native plants in this garden.

Then they go over to another garden on campus that has non-native plants and they compare how many pollinators they have here in the garden.

They see here in the garden with how many they see in the non-native gardens on campus.

So they're, so - They're doing - Research, they're, they're doing research, they're doing research and they get very, very bored in the areas with non-native plants.

They've also collected plants and with the help of a chemistry professor, they've looked at the chemical compounds in the plants.

We brought our summer bridge students over who are the incoming freshmen who wanna major in STEM fields.

We've done activities with them.

We've done earth, earth night, tourism, the garden.

We hope that more and more colleges will use it, our students, to come over and get our ideas for design, for example, even this one students to come over and learn about how native plants can be a really thriving business and maybe they'll start their businesses.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- So tell me a little bit about the maintenance, the ongoing maintenance, right?

It can be a little bit different sometimes than just your mow and blow it landscape as we sometimes say.

So let's talk about how you guys are maintaining this.

- Okay.

So the first year we had a garden committee that planted most of the plants in May and June of last year.

And then, even though we tried to kill the Bermuda grass and that stage, a lot of that came in.

So we had to do a lot of weeding that first year.

So we had what we call garden parties on Friday mornings.

And so the faculty and staff showed up.

We had students show up, some of the staff from across campus.

And so we spent a lot of time weeding that first year.

The second year we've had very few weeds.

We still do need to pull some of the nuts edge.

And then what we've tended to do this year is pull up some of the plants that have receded.

Okay.

Because we wanna kind of maintain the, the original design of the garden.

So we have like the max million sunflowers that we see very easily.

And so we don't really want it to turn into a forest of max million sunflowers.

And so we do weed those out.

Okay.

We've had to use, of course, no pesticides, no herbicides.

We watered quite a bit the first year to get the plants established.

This year we've only watered during the really periods of really high heat.

So it's been really, you know, much easier this year to maintain it as the plants have really folded in and you know, shade it out.

- We, well, and I know one of the big questions is how to keep the Bermuda grass out, right?

Yes.

Obviously you're still fighting that sometimes maybe in there.

Yeah.

But I, I love this nice concrete border that you have here.

It's a good warning track.

Yes.

We get start to see it encroaching there.

Right?

- Yeah.

We also had some erosion problems.

And so what we did, we had the dirt flowing out onto the lawn down here, which the ground crew didn't really like.

Right.

And so we planted the fogfruit down here.

Okay.

Which serves as kind of a mulch.

And so that really took care of the erosion problems.

It's a ground cover kind, it's a great ground cover and visited by many, many pollenators.

- And it's in full bloom right now.

It is.

Is it's, it's in full bloom.

Fantastic.

Well, tell me about some of your other favorite plants in those gardens.

- Oh gosh, I can't pick a favorite.

We had passion flowers.

So we have vines, we have passion flower, we have the tropi cycle.

We have many plants that have a very long growing season, you know, flower from spring into the Englemann'S Daisy for example.

So I love that plant, the Letterman's Veia.

Oh yeah.

It's just amazing.

It attracts so many bees and butterflies.

The cup plant a lot of the cups, you know, formed by the leaves that fill up with water, you know, so the insects and birds can come get water and they also just grow so tall and the Maximiliam sunflowers in the fall.

And then in the fall a little bit later when the aster comes in, the New England aster.

It just is such a huge, beautiful splash of color.

So I really love it.

Yeah.

Well - I'm, I love all the plants.

Well, I know you're a biologist.

You're training in your background and so obviously you had a big involvement in getting this established and also developing the plant list for this as well.

- Yes, it was.

We tried to pick Oklahoma native perennials, you know, and we did want to make sure things were in flare from the spring through the fall.

And then also I wanted to have a good representation of plant families so that it would be very useful to, of courses like plant taxonomy and then of course, you know, many different pollination mechanisms to attract many, many different pollinators.

- Absolutely.

- And then Connie Horne, who was our landscape architect, just did a fantastic job laying out the garden.

We were, when I got with her and asked her to be our landscape architect, I said, I want this to be the most beautiful pollinator garden on the face of the earth.

And I know I'm partial, but, but I really believe that it is.

It - Is a beautiful garden indeed.

Thank you so much for sharing it with us today.

Thank you so much.

Joining me is Connie Scothorn with CLS and Associates, and she is a landscape architect who does a lot of design with native plants.

Connie, tell me a little bit, we're here at the UCO Pollinator Garden.

Tell me a little bit about your approach here when you were designing this.

- You know, this garden was different than probably any other garden that I've done.

Granted, every garden we do is different, but this one was driven by Gloria because she is such a native plant enthusiast and she had a list of plants that she wanted to include.

No one has ever come to me like that.

And so what we did was we took her list and we looked at what we could find, what's commercially available, what will actually do good in this garden and in this environment.

And then we designed the garden so that it would be attractive to people first, because if it's not attractive to people, no one's gonna keep it - Right.

- And then second that it will be attractive to pollinators and help the birds and the bees and the butterflies, and especially the bees because of John.

And then, you know, make it accessible so that people can walk through the garden and walk and be part of the garden instead of just looking at it from a distance.

I think those are probably our main goals in working in this design.

- Well, I know a lot of times people look at a garden that has more native plants and they might think, ah, it's a little hairy for me.

So how do you approach it like with those design concepts and maintain an A design using some more native plants?

- You know, I think you can design a native garden so that it looks just like any other garden, you know, you can use by plant selection.

You can pick plants that are more tame or you can pick plants that are gonna, you know, spread a little bit.

It depends on what the goal of the garden is.

In the beginning, we've certainly done some native gardens that you would never know were native.

Sometimes we sneak them in.

On the other hand, it's so much easier to take care of.

It's so much easier to have flowers in your garden.

I think flowers, why?

Why would you have a garden if you didn't have flowers?

And these, you can even see it.

Here we are in the middle of August, the worst time to have a garden and there's flowers blooming all over this place.

- And I know that was one of your strategies, right?

Is to constantly have something and that takes some skills to plan out perennials.

Yes.

Because unlike annuals that are constantly blooming, perennials have kind of a, a shelf life of their bloom time.

They have - A time and sometimes they'll bloom and then they'll stop and then they'll bloom again.

But we wanted to make sure that there's something always blooming at all times from early spring all the way through the very end of, end of fall, so that we can keep those pollinators fed and happy and active here.

So it's, it's so much fun to see.

- Absolutely.

And and you mentioned a little bit that it is lower maintenance, but it is not a no maintenance garden.

Right.

- Especially when you first start, you are pulling weeds just like you would in any new garden.

And you know, sometimes it's overwhelming, but any new garden is gonna have weeds.

And this one, you know, this is a really large space.

Okay.

So that's part of it.

If you're gonna have a really small native garden, it's no more, no worse than anything else.

But then once you're in year two and three and more, it becomes easier and easier to maintain.

For one, you don't have to water all the time.

Water may be once or twice a year and probably not even that.

- Right.

- You don't have to spray, you don't have to fertilize, you don't have to trim it like you do.

We, we pretty much look at trimming once a year in the spring to cut, cut the old growth down and then that's all.

So it's really easy.

- And you mentioned watering.

I think a lot of times people think, oh, it's just a matter of throwing out seeds and letting them do their thing.

Right.

But you do have to establish these plants.

- You do.

I mean, there is such a thing as planting wildflower seeds.

And if you do that, it can be beautiful, but you will have a messier garden than you do.

And a lot of, a lot of our Oklahoma wildflowers will do beautifully just by, planted by seed.

This one is not because we wanted a more organized garden and we wanted to include all these different species that we included.

- Well, as a landscape architect, I'm trying to have a list of plants and source those plants.

Can you tell me a little bit about that process and the availability of some of these plants?

- Well, you know, even since we first started this garden, the availability of native plants has become much more, much more available.

We, we find them now in a lot of nurseries that are dedicated to just selling native plants in Oklahoma City.

And I'm sure there are some in Tulsa also.

I know there's one in Stillwater.

So there are people like that.

And then now even some of the more established commercial nurseries are starting to sell native plants too.

It's a movement.

I keep saying it's a movement.

It's catching on.

And we're really happy to see that.

So native plants are becoming much more available.

- What would you say to anybody that might be on the edge of, should I go that way with my design or not?

- See, I can't figure out why anybody wouldn't, but you should.

For one thing, our bees and our birds and our, all of our pollinators are in serious decline and we need to provide food for them.

I mean, the birds are down by a third in the last 50 years.

So that's 3 billion fewer birds that we have now than we did 50 years ago.

And that's scary when you start thinking about the future and what's gonna happen 50 years from now.

Are we gonna have birds to enjoy?

- So Connie, tell me a little bit, I believe your firm just sort of shifted to this native design in the last 10 years or so.

Was that because of the birds?

- Well, the birds are really important, but when we started shifting to native plants, it was really more client driven.

We had several clients that wanted their landscape to start looking more like Oklahoma.

And so we started doing the research and realized, yes, this is what we should be doing.

And then we realized the problems of finding the plant.

So it's, it's been a growing process.

It's definitely been a process of learning.

Like I said, we learn something new on every project.

Something that does well, something that does too well sometimes.

And I have the same, I have a native garden in my own house and it's just fantastic because again, I'm learning things and what sometimes I learned that I need to take this plant and give it away.

And the, and the - Gardens are just more interesting to walk through.

Right.

So much because of what you discover and you see - There's so much more interesting and it's, and it's great to go to other states and to other gardens and it like go to other cities and see what types of plants they're using and see how they're succeeding.

Because even though we may have a plant that's native here in Oklahoma, it's also gonna be native in Kansas, but it might grow a little bit differently.

Absolutely.

So it's just fun to see how the plants are gonna grow and what they do.

And it's, it means, and it's all beautiful.

- Well thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Thank you.

For more information on sourcing native plants, visit the Oklahoma Native Plant Networks website.

Joining me is Dr. John Bartell, who is a professor of a biology here at UCO.

And Dr. Bartell, I know you are also known as the bee expert.

So we're here in what is named after you, your pollinator garden, basically to talk a little bit about some of those pollinator essentials to add into a garden.

Tell me a little bit, obviously we need plants, but what are some of the other components we need to incorporate?

- Yeah, so the way that I view this garden is that it's a one stop shop for bees.

Okay.

So they can come here and they can get nectar and they can get pollen.

And those are two things that we know all bees need.

But what a lot of people don't realize is that they need things like mud and they need water.

They're just like us.

They have to drink as well.

So a good bee garden is gonna have in it, you know, a source of water.

We have one of those right behind us here, for example.

And it's also a source of mud.

And it turns out that a lot of female bees, when they're making their nests, a lot of solitary bees that are different from honeybees for example, use that mud to construct the nest that they need.

Okay.

So, so when a bee comes here, we expect that bee to find what they need.

Okay.

To not only just stop and get nectar and pollen, but also to get the other things they need to actually live right here on the premises of the garden.

- Okay.

So they need home construction materials too, right?

- Exactly.

Yes.

Yes.

And you can see that with the wood right here that I'm touching next to us.

You know, some bees like to nest above the ground inside of wood, they find little cavities in there.

This little piece of wood here was dragged across the street, you know, by some rather entrepreneurial colleagues of mine who wanted it here in the garden so that they could then use it as a place where bees in the spring and they have use it as a place to nest.

- Okay.

Okay.

And do you need to bore holes in that?

'cause I know sometimes that you put holes for - It.

Turns out this all works very naturally.

Okay.

Okay.

Because there are whole groups of beetles out there, for example, that like to nest and eat wood right after a tree has fallen.

And so it turns out there are naturally occurring holes within the wood.

But you can, if you want to, to give them a little help is you can take a drill and drill holes into it.

In fact, we've done that with some of these pieces of wood that you see - Here.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So we need a little, it's okay when a plant dies and we have a little exposed soil.

Exactly - What you're telling me.

Exactly.

And in fact, there's a whole group of bees.

The majority of bees, I would say actually nest directly in the soil.

So they need these little patches of soil that they can go to and that they can start to dig into.

And some of them go way down into the soil, a foot, two feet, something like that.

So everything here is important to the bees - And the fact that they're living sometimes in the soil, that's something to consider when we're also applying different things to our garden as well, right?

- Yes, correct.

Yeah.

So I think one of the things that you want to make sure of is that the soil that you have really is natural in its origin.

It doesn't have too many extra ingredients.

You know, obviously things like pesticides and herbicides that might drain into that could be a real potential problem for bees.

In fact, there's some thinking that one of the major contributors to the decline of bees across the world now are certain kind of chemicals that don't even necessarily kill the bee, but have what are called sub lethal effects.

You know, that can maybe make them not learn as well or live as long and things like that.

So, you know, every piece of land that you have on your property may have different kinds of purposes, but if you wanna raise bees in that land, right.

You know, just think about it the same way you would your own home.

You know, what do you want in your home?

What do you want on the floor?

What do you want to, you know, in the food you eat and so forth.

And so similarly with bees, you know, you want this clean environment that represents the kind of environment that they're used to.

Whether it's the soil, whether it's the flowers here, these are all native plants, you know, these are the things that bees are used to seeing and that they need.

- Right.

And you were talking a little bit about their habitat, soil, wood.

You also have some boxes that I've noticed around this garden.

Tell me a little bit about what those are for.

- Yes, and the idea behind those boxes is that they are meant to simulate these little holes we were just talking about earlier that are in things like these down pieces of branches and so forth that come from the trees.

So it turns out that you can make these things, we call them trap nest, you know, they're, but what they are is just little holes that are drilled into pine.

And we put those all together into a unit and we, the whole diameters are different.

You know, we have larger size for larger bees and small ones for smaller bees.

And then we can hang those wherever we want throughout the garden where we feel the bees may need them.

Some of 'em are low to the ground, some are higher, you know, some are in the shade, some might be more in the sun.

Every species kind of has its preferences at one level or another.

And so we just make sure that they have potential homes available to them, you know, throughout the property.

You know, and they can choose, you know, - Rent - Free.

- And you're then using that as research to kind of identify.

- First thing we're trying to do is just to get a general sense of what's here.

- Okay.

You - Know, so, you know, this year we've probably collected between a dozen and two dozen species of bees in the garden.

And so one of the ways that you can learn about them Yeah.

Is to put out these little units and then you can see what their nests look like.

And that can help you confirm what the species is, what the needs of that bee are.

But in general, if you can see that the bee is living here, if it's taking up residence, if it's in one of these little holes around here, if it's using the mud and the, you know, that means that it, it's chosen this place as home and that's a really good sign.

Yeah.

And it gets us excited 'cause we know that they're gonna make it.

- Well, I've never met somebody who has a pollinator garden named after 'em, and a bee named after 'em as well.

Tell me a little bit about this bee that is named after you.

- Well, that bee does not live in Oklahoma yet, yet, you know, we're, we're trying to induce it to come up here to this part of the state, but who knows if that'll happen.

But that bee actually lives probably on the border between Mexico and maybe up into New Mexico.

And it's a type of bee called an orchid bee.

Okay.

Okay.

Rezi a Barth, I, if you want to know the name.

Okay.

Yes.

And I owe that bee name to a very close colleague of mine, Victor Gonzalez, who's up at the University of Kansas.

University of Kansas is where they used to do a lot of bee studies.

Still do, you know, it's very famous for that.

And so he thought of me and he thought of students and learning and all that, and he thought, well, I'll name this, this bee for him, you know, because he needed a name.

Okay.

- Alright.

- And so I was very grateful for that.

I don't know how the bee feels about it, but I'm, I'm perfectly fine with it.

Yeah.

- And, and to kind of close, you know, there are some people that, and even young kids, like how do you get them to not think bees are gonna sting them?

Right.

Yeah.

Let's, let's kind of talk to that person who's just very skittish of the stereotype of bees.

Yeah.

- So I think the first thing I'd say is that there are a whole lot of things that we call bees.

Okay.

There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world.

Okay.

In the United States there's about 4,001 10th, about 400 or so live in Oklahoma.

Okay.

So there's a lot of them.

And most people, when we think about bees, we think of the honeybee, right?

And the honeybee is actually the state insect of Oklahoma.

But it turns out that honeybees aren't even from this part of the world.

Right.

They come from another part of the world.

And so one day maybe we'll have a, a native bee, you know, as the state, you know, bee of, of of Oklahoma as well.

But regardless, when people think of bees, they think almost always of honeybees and honeybees sting.

And they sting when you get near their home.

Just like we would be a little concerned if somebody got near our home and started knocking on the door and we didn't know who they were and they were trying to get in and take, you know, things out of our kitchen and so forth.

- So they're protecting - You, they're very protective.

Yeah.

But the vast majority of bees don't even live in that kind of thing where they have a big home with other bees, you know, a colony.

They actually live alone and they're called solitary bees.

They nest in the soil, they nest in these holes that we've talked about, and they have absolutely no desire to, to protect their home or come after you or want to sting you.

The only time that you would worry about that is if you picked them up and you started to kind of squeeze them a little bit and they would might sting back.

Just like if, like if you were out shopping at the grocery store, somebody grabbed you, you would want, you know, fight back a little bit.

So I think the thing about bees is, you know, don't provoke them.

They're just out doing their business.

We've gotta a bumblebee right there doing its business.

And if you went over and tried to pick it up, it'd say, Hey, I'm trying to, trying to finish my work today.

You know, so, - All right, so note to self, don't pick up any bees and they'll leave you alone.

- Yeah, I think, I think it's a general rule.

Watch them, you know, let them, you know, enjoy the environment and watch them enjoy the environment.

- Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

You're - Very welcome.

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