As we continue on with our sustainability series with the help of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, a pollinator ecologist at SUNY ESF explains how you can enrich your garden.

“These actually close up in the middle of the day but in the morning time, they are wide open and covered with bumblebees, so these are spiderworts, they look like a grass, but they're not a grass,” said Molly Jacobson, pollinator ecologist at SUNY ESF Restoration Science Center.

She says native plants like spiderwort are great for a pollinator garden.

“Plantings that contain plants that are beneficial to pollinators. So mainly we are hoping for these to be native plants. So plants that are indigenous to New York or more specifically, your region of New York,” Jacobson said.

These plants provide resources, like nectar to pollinators.

“So a lot of our pollinators, like butterflies and moths and bees, drink nectar to fuel themselves as adults, and bees also collect pollen to feed their larvae. And then there are also plants that, if they're native, they will act as host plants for caterpillars. And the caterpillars will obviously go on to become butterflies and moths. And they'll also feed countless other organisms, like songbirds, too,” Jacobson explained.

Jacobson says having native plants in your garden is great for climate resilience.

“The roots of these plants can go down 10 feet or more and so that really helps them survive drought, which is going to be a more important problem in the future with climate change. They also store more carbon. They help prevent erosion. They help filter runoff before it reaches our water supply,” Jacobson said.

And while you may want to contain pollinators like bees or small insects because they’re eating your plants, Jacobson says they enrich your garden.

“Especially if you have something like a vegetable garden that has things that you’re trying to grow for yourself to eat, you’re going to need a variety of native bees to do that,” Jacobson said.

And she says it’s actually rewarding to have your plants eaten by insects.

“If you plant a native plant and you see a caterpillar on it, a couple months later you see a butterfly that you identify as a spice bush swallow tail, you’re like, 'Hey, that’s from my spice bush, I made that!'" Jacobson said.

When you plant native plants, when you put a tree in the ground, you will actually reap those rewards personally. You will see the new species that are coming to that, and you will see the positive impact that it has on your community.