Hi, I'm Tinisha, Spain, host of Mid American gardener and today we are out of the studio and at Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve in Mahomet, Illinois.

Now we talk a lot on our show about pollinators about native plants.

And so today we're going to catch up with our friend, Rusty Maulding.

And he's going to talk to us about how to actually put in a pollinator or a butterfly garden in our landscape.

And it's a lot easier than you probably think.

So let's go find rusty and get started.

Okay, so we are here at Lake of the Woods with our pal rusty now before we jump in, because we don't see you as often as we would like.

So tell us a little bit about you and your specialty.

Before we jump into this lovely project here.

Sure.

Well, my name is Rusty Maulding.

I'm an ornamental horticulturist.

I spent about 25 years or so in the landscape contracting end of the business.

And about two years ago, I joined the Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve, as a site superintendent and sort of moved into caring for public spaces, public gardening, that whole bit, and I'm learning a lot about natives along the way.

Excellent.

And that's what you're going to teach us here today.

So pay attention because this is going to be kind of for the long game, right?

We're talking about planting, pollinators, pollinator pockets, pollinator gardens have been huge for the last few years.

And so rusty is going to talk to us about the process of making that happen.

Now, this is a median right here outside the pavilion at Lake of the Woods.

Now this is a lovely example of a pollinator pocket pollinator garden.

Tell us some of the plants that are in here.

Sure.

So this is a myriad of different plants and you kind of want it's all kind of a mixture to make sure you have different blooming times for different seasons to help pollinators get through the season.

And so right here in front of me is the pale Purple coneflower that is a cousin to the regular Purple coneflower which is also right here.

You can see a little bit of a difference there different blooming time.

Yes, this yellow flower in front of us is the same coreopsis it's kind of a nice early blooming variety of coreopsis we've seen a few bees visiting these guys we have we have they are being shy right now.

To your left there, that's a lovely Penstemon.

Many gardeners will know Huskers red or dark knight, this is the parent plant for that Penstemon digitalis.

So that's, that's kind of a fun one.

One of my favorites, I'm going to jump in here just a little bit is this guy right here, and it does not blooming yet.

But that is rattlesnake master, which will have a it'll eventually get him to be about this taller.

So it will have kind of like little buttons, little white buttons on top of it.

It just looks cool architecturally has nice clean green blue foliage.

And it works really well on these pollinator beds.

Very nice.

We have some a Narada or beebalm in here.

And then, you know, some of what makes a pollinator garden work is sort of the under understory stuff.

And so we've got some different grasses, I'm gonna hop a little further, just peek over your shoulder, and we've got some little bluestem in here that will add some structure late season.

And then the all important sedge the mighty sedge thing that nobody ever pays attention to, it's kind of at the ground level.

It doesn't really, it's not real showy, but it kind of weaves into everything and makes it all work to nice early season, Papa green, that's this guy right here, you can see three of these plants.

That's one of many different stages that are in this mix.

Now when you're putting together a bad like this, you just named a lot of flowers at varying heights.

That all goes into play.

Oh, I mean, I'm sure when you were building this you were literally like, Okay, we're gonna put this here.

How do you build that?

How do you build upon that.

So I guess part of what I'm trying to do here is along the edges a little bit shorter, shorter plants and, and then towards the center that's more of your height.

So you can see a few more grasses or some bad Teesha in here that after it gets established better, will be substantially taller it'll it'll fully fill this space and there's some other later later season plants that will get up and more height.

So I usually stair step it so the center is a little bit taller and the edge in this particular setting you have two edges is a little bit shorter.

Now the important thing here is these plants are going to want to fill and move around.

Okay, so there will be some editing to do Gotcha.

So it's not just set it and forget not just set it and forget it.

It's not a completely laborious task either.

You sort of get an opportunity to go through and say you know, I really love the way this is working here next year.

I don't want that there.

So I'm gonna go through and and Make some changes, okay.

With regard to variety?

How can we find out what to buy?

What to purchase?

How do you know what goes into a pollinator bed?

Oh, that's a that's a that's a really broad question.

It is.

I mean, you know, what a rose do well, in here, what a you know what I'm saying?

How did you know, to put these varieties together?

You know, I guess it's it kind of is depends on what your plan is.

So for us here at Lake of the Woods, our rental facility is which is right behind us.

Typically its peak uses in the summer.

So I targeted this for sort of a May through September, October, display, the shrubs and things of that nature, they are going to provide some more structure, especially over the winter.

And so that is something that you might want to consider as a as a homeowner.

Particularly if you're looking at like a front foundation planting, I would absolutely work some small shrubs into this.

Roses, I've, as part of my business, I oftentimes work roses, and they're not native.

But they do really well to provide extended season color and structure over the winter.

So and some really small like hydrangeas, the paniculata, or the coming on night.

Bobo is a great variety that stays really short, it only gets to be about that big.

Okay, excellent.

So when you have something like this, and you put it in, I wanted to show the progression because you talked about you know, this is going to happen overnight, how long has this particular bed been in?

So this, this bed in particular has really outperformed.

We installed this in May of last year.

And I would say these results are somewhat atypical.

It's done really fantastic.

We watered it several I mean, last summer was a drought, we were watering it about every two to three days, through most of June and then more like weekly in July there abouts.

And then we kind of just let it go.

So these are all natives once they get the root system down.

This is a very drought resistant mix right here.

Oh, that's good.

So is that a characteristic of native plants is kind of helping with that.

The nice thing about native plants is they can stretch all kinds of ranges.

So as we further develop this space, at the far end, there's a natural area for a rain garden, it'll act as almost like a filter for the runoff here for the water coming off this parking lot, which is really cool.

So there, you're going to have plants that are meant for wet areas.

So there will be some more sedges in there different varieties, some of like the beards tongue, the Penstemon that I mentioned earlier, and a few other plants in here will tolerate that.

And we'll be fine with, you know, temporary flooding.

But there will also be some other plants, we're going to add to the mix.

Gotcha.

And talking about sort of tailoring to the landscape.

Let's move down a little bit because this is a great demonstration of two things, time and space.

So this looks very different from the space we were just in, but for a couple of reasons.

So I would love for you to just tell us what we're looking at.

And sure fill us in.

Sure.

So originally this head, these are hackberry above us that I don't know if you can see at home or not.

But large tree, it's about 18 inches, 20 inches across as the DBH from the trunk.

So it's drip line is clear out over here.

So we went head to go with a more shade tolerant selection over here.

And shade tolerant plants typically are not quite as showy.

They aren't quite as aggressive.

And they just have to be kind of separated.

So we have kind of a walkway here in between.

And eventually, you may see some migration from here to there.

And they are to hear just as plants settle into the environment that they like, sure, but this is a completely different plant mix.

And we did that on purpose.

We stayed away from the trunk of the tree when we were planting so that there was a nice we weren't getting into the structural roots when we were trying to put in these plugs.

By the way, this was all planted with small plugs.

The root balls were only about that big around and about that deep.

So these were these were tiny plants.

They have come a long way.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what do we have in here?

So there is one let's see.

We have Columbine, this is Columbine, this is the Canadian Columbine, a different type of sedges right in here.

We have a palm sedge right up in here, which I did use in both spaces that kind of tolerates a little bit of shade and some sun.

This is an anemone it's blooming.

Now I would I would urge caution when planting this guy that is an m&e, sylvestris it will get aggressive.

Okay, so we've put it in limited spaces and in other areas where other competition is going to kind of help hold it at bay.

What else do we have in here?

It's shorts astir.

And then this is this lovely plant here with a big leaf.

Better right there.

That's Xia Xia, which is a fun name to say it's got that cool tropical look to it does and it's a really early bloomer fairly early.

I'm yellow flower, not not like Microsoft while but it's shade space.

It's pretty good.

Sure.

Now this particular section was planted when most of this was planted in the fall.

Okay, so you can see the difference, what, six months we'll make an installation.

Sure, big reason we waited was because of plant availability.

We did pocket in a couple of varieties over here at this at this more sun location.

But most of this was planted in the fall because just because of availability and so you gotta roll with the punches.

You know, your shorteners you adapt, sure and overcome.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Okay, so if if someone wanted to do this at home, because we do have a lot of questions come in about I want to do a pollinator bed.

This kind of this is the blueprint, I guess, if you've got a tree, you know what to do as far as getting your shade your plants here, considering natives?

And then how big of a break?

You know, is this standard?

If you were gonna separate the two, how big of a break do you need?

Well, normally, you know, at home garden, I wouldn't have a break.

Okay, I just let them go talk together and figure it out.

You know, it's, it's finding the shade line for your garden is one of the most challenging things because the sun is not in the same position.

Trees grow the eave, or the over overhang on your house, that can all lead to differences in where that shade pattern looks like.

And so especially with some a situation like this, where plants are meant to sort of roam and nestle into the places they like, this allows them the opportunity to co mingle and figure it out and figure it out.

And he has a way.

Yes.

Jurassic Park, right?

Oh, you know, I was gonna get that reference life, I'll find a way.

So time wise, if someone wanted to do this at home, I guess the biggest thing is to be patient because it's not going to look like this overnight, right?

It's gonna take some time to grow in.

But what's the first step in putting in a pollinator bed at your residence?

Sure.

So I guess the first thing to start with is getting it weed free.

So if you can get all of your any invasive weeds and get, you know, just get rid of them and start with a clean slate, that was really important.

What we did here next is we actually laid down a layer of woodchips, mulch of any kind, a two inch depth or there abouts maybe three at the most.

And then we drilled into that mulch, because we were planning these on one foot centers.

So that's real close.

You don't have to Den futz with mulching in between.

And that really helps hold the weeds down helps moisture retention and kind of gives them a good chance to get started.

On this spring or late winter, we came back and we did actually cut down what was here and then laid another light layer of wood chip over the top.

That may be the last time we do that we'll have to see.

As you can see, we've got great fill in over here in the sun area, we probably will end up doing it one more time in the shady your areas as it continues to develop.

But once that fills in, that's that's green mulch.

That's that part of the value of the sage.

It fills all those little gaps and makes it so that the weeds are out competed.

And that's so I before we started rolling, I asked a very terrible question.

I asked if there was weeds green underneath this mulch and shame on me.

Shame on me.

But you want to go into that a little bit?

Sure.

Yeah, so weed fabric is kind of a misnomer.

It's really, I'm gonna I'm biased, but I'm gonna say it's a marketing ploy.

Essentially, what happens is, if you put that weed fabric down, it will do a really great job for about a season, maybe two seasons of keeping the weeds at bay, anything that was below the weed fabric.

The problem is, well, several problems.

But the biggest one is weeds will the material on top will start to decompose.

And you come up with a routing area or routing media on top of the weed fabric, which means the weeds are rooting down through the fabric then you can no longer pull them because you're pulling the weed fabric out, it turns into a giant mess.

And then inevitably, somebody decides let's put another layer of weed fabric down.

And then you have two layers of weed fabric and you're really going to make a landscape contractor unhappy Oh, yeah.

In 10 years, and they had to come back and they find all this.

Yeah, and to plant the next season.

You've got to you know, get your knife out and cut slits.

Exactly.

And it doesn't allow for things to naturally move and grow it because because many of these plants will get bigger this way.

And whenever you cut a tiny hole around that because you want to make sure you get it nice and tight, right?

Yes, no, we're going to jump around my plan.

No, never now, then it winds up killing the plant.

Gotcha because it can't naturally grow and expand.

And I've read also it's not great for earthworms and other sort of irritating insects and things that are down in the soil.

It's taking away the opportunity for for earthworms and other things that kind of come up.

Take that that organic matter down and take it to into the ground to to really benefit the soil.

It eliminates that option.

Gotcha.

Now we like to keep it as natural as poss possible?

Absolutely.

So okay, well, let's go check out some other areas.

But this is just a great opportunity for folks at home to see, if you wanted to start this.

It's an it's not a hard task, I don't think just paying attention to what's already in your landscape, knowing what sunlight you get and letting it fill in.

Absolutely.

Okay, let's go check out some other stuff okay, so now we've moved to the pavilion, and we're going to be talking about spacing, what happens when things go wrong, we've got animal damage, we've got all kinds of stuff to talk about here.

So we're in a little bit bigger of a space than we were before.

And we've got I see a lot of the same flowers and a few different ones.

But let's talk about the thought behind when you putting this bed in and kind of the intention that was set here.

Sure.

So actually, this, this whole build out here was part of a grant.

And as part of that grant, we needed to bring nature look closer to people.

And what better way than to have a picnic table and a grill right behind us.

And so it was really about bringing people closer to nature.

Gotcha.

And we I think we succeeded in that.

I would agree.

So yeah, there's, there's a lot of really cool things happen in here.

A lot of the same plants, like you mentioned, but there's a few variations.

And this is due to budgetary reasons, it's spaced out a little bit further than that than the selection, we were just add over there at Lake of the Woods pavilion.

So you'll notice you'll see a lot more space in between here.

And it's a lot easier to see.

Maybe, you know, as as gardening goes, plants sometimes fail.

And you can see that those holes, and then sort of some editing that we need to do later on.

We've got some rip to our friends over here.

And you know what, if you're a gardener, you know that that is just what naturally happens.

And we talked about the spacing here, that's not a bad thing.

No, it's not.

And it's, you know, everybody's budget is different.

If I have, if that's not a consideration, the one foot on center works really, really well.

This is more like 18 inches, maybe two feet in some cases, and it just is going to take a little longer it will get there, it's just going to take an extra year.

And we talked about that the some of these will self seed and will continue, continue to help itself fill in rather than putting those plugs in.

So what are some of the plants out here that you can count on to reseed themselves and grow each year expand their footprint, sure, so well that the Penstemon right there next to me, it's a nice easy one, because it's a flower that went absolutely well, but as well, this, this is that pale coneflower.

Again, over here.

This is Rudbeckia.

And this guy is not firing yet, but it will be in about a month.

And it does have a propensity to self.

So it is not not quite as aggressive as like the anonymity I mentioned before.

But you will definitely need to do some editing.

And part of the reason I put that here was so that it would sort of weave in between.

So that's, that's kind of fun.

There's there's a lie actress up here.

And the liatris will also self so a little bit not quite as much as some of the and when I talk about self.

So you know, maybe this one plant will produce five or 10 more the next year, it just kind of depends on how happy it is.

And really we're where you're at with with rain and those sorts of things.

So that guy will but one of the reasons I love this plant is like this is this is like catnip to cats for monarch butterflies.

Oh no.

Why extra species?

The particularly the native varieties?

They just go absolutely nuts over it.

No did okay.

Now for the spots right here for our friends?

Who did it make it at home?

When you have a plant that doesn't work in a certain space?

Do you replace that sometimes with the same plant?

Do you try something different?

Or just whatever you have on hand?

Sure.

And you know what?

It all varies.

Like that.

Yeah, it depends, isn't it?

Isn't it the classic and that does Yeah, that's the one in this kind of situation.

One of the one of the best things about it is you have the latitude to go ahead and be creative and select a different plan if you so choose.

Maybe Maybe this this particular exhibition is not doing it for you, but you really like the liatris or maybe you really want to get some more sedges in here.

You totally have that sort of discretion with this style of gardening.

If you're in a more formal you pretty much are stuck, you got to put the same species the same variety right back into that space or just throws everything off.

Yes, yeah.

Which can be a frustration because sometimes they plan isn't best suited for that one low Dipper pocket or that one high ridge you've got it just isn't quite working for that plan.

And if you've got something a space like this where it slopes did that even come into place when you guys were Deciding what to put where?

Okay, sure.

Yeah, it did, because I wanted the taller plants to be down towards the bottom of the slope.

You know, because if they're up close here, we really tried to keep it so that really right around here was like two feet 30 inches.

And then as you get down further, there are some plants in there that are gonna be three to four feet tall.

You don't want to feel like overwhelmed and scrunched up, but that kind of helps feel just a little bit enveloped and cozy.

Oh, nice.

Excellent point.

And you wanted to talk about these?

These flowers here.

What are those?

Yeah, it looks like they're about ready to bloom.

I see some color popping through.

It's a butterfly milkweed right there, butterfly milkweed.

This will be bright orange here coming up real soon.

I'm sure that all the gardeners at home have talked to have seen this or know what it is.

So it is probably I was hoping it was going to be opened by today.

But maybe with the cooler temperatures by the end of the week.

or early next week.

We do also have a cousin of it, I think standing right behind you.

Yep, I almost smashed it.

Here's here's two lovely specimens of a swamp milkweed.

Yes.

So the butterfly milkweed will stay 24 Maybe 30 inches, if it's real happy.

This guy wants to be 36 inches, maybe 42.

And we'll get you know, this sort of this big around and more like this height.

That was gonna flower a little earlier this one a little later.

And as everybody knows, the the thing with the milkweed plants is they are the host plant for the monarch butterfly larvae.

Yes.

So you don't have those, you're not attracting the larva.

That's right, you've got to have those.

And I also I really appreciate what you were talking about.

As far as spacing goes.

If it's cost prohibitive, just take the time and let the plants that you do have fill in it will happen it will help have to do it all in one year.

And that's kind of the beauty of gardening, right?

Kind of yeah, just the patience of it all waiting for it to develop and occasionally have some setbacks.

Yes.

So like right behind us over here.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna make the camera guys work.

Really.

Keep today I'm moving around.

So one of the setbacks you can have is sometimes the plants fail.

And sometimes nature this is a this is a rabbit came in and had had a lunch, maybe a breakfast.

Luckily, in this particular location, we don't have a lot of critter pressure.

But I do know that the last place that we were at over there by Lake of the Woods pavilion, we've had to make several different deer and rabbit repellent applications just to try to, you know, keep them on once they get big, usually.

Okay.

Okay.

They just have to get a little bit stronger getting past that point.

Yeah.

For the applications that you use for people who are curious or maybe battling deer or rabbits at home, me, what do you use?

Is there a?

That's a great question, I couldn't tell you what I, what I can tell you is is that our staff, Michael does a great job of rotating it.

He has found that just using all the different mixtures and varieties available and just don't repeat more than maybe twice, three times and then switch it up, keep them guessing, keep them guessing, because it kind of you know, they might start to get like, Okay, I really liked that plan.

But now I'm kind of getting used to this scent or taste or whatever.

Change it on him.

So that and it's really the full spectrum of different things.

Last spring.

We had we had a lot of you know, we talked about failures.

We had we had a lot of opportunity to fill in.

Hey, that's the real lie.

Oh, what happened here?

Initially, you know, just didn't have a good successful overwinter.

Yeah.

And so when we came back through we filled in, and what you're seeing now it really is, is probably about 80%.

Just since last spring.

Gotcha.

Okay, so yeah, this is coming along beautifully.

Yeah.

I imagine if we come out next year, it'll be even more full.

And that's the idea.

I do want to talk about a little beat up there.

Yeah, let's do it get a chance.

One of the plants that I have mentioned before is sedges and I love sedges for what they do.

Not all sedges are created equal and the yellow nutsedge is really not a gardeners friend.

That's this guy right here.

And so if you didn't plan it there, it's probably not supposed to be there.

And one of the ways you know, it's a sedge and not a grass is because this if you roll this stem and your hands, it's triangular and shaped, the grass is going to be flat so you can feel three distinct sides.

I am so impressed that you eyeballed that from that far away and it was that tiny rig, I said I this is spreading aggressively as you can see.

So this is that there's all said this is all this yellow message, guys.

So this is not this is not a friend and really truthfully the best way to take care of this is with chemical control.

They produce little nutlets that they leave in the ground when you pull it and it'll just keep coming back.

Yes, and herbicide is your best choice, especially when it's limited like this because it will take over.

Awesome.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, Rusty, thank you so much for the tips and tricks in education today.

And if you are interested in putting in a pollinator garden at your house, I think this was pretty much the blueprint to do that.

So any anything else?

Before we go anything?

You know, I think I think for me, gardening is an experience.

It's an adventure.

Yes.

And once once you have that I try is it every new bed or every, maybe not every new bed but most new beds, I'll try one new plant, maybe to see how it does.

And if you'd like it, great.

Use it again.

And if you don't like it, well, you're not overly invested.

Exactly.

That's the beauty of gardening.

Right try a little bit trial and error.

So you know, there is kind of an editing you know, it's if you don't like it, we can always dig this thing up and move it over a little bit.

Or rusty, thank you so much for letting us come out today.

And for all the lessons that you taught us about how to put in our pollinator beds.

And if you're in the area you'd like to visit rusty in his getting at Lake of the Woods, I'm sure they'd be welcome you out here and you get to see all the lovely things that we talked about.

So until we see you again, studio, thank you very much.

And thank you so much for watching, and if you've got questions for me or for rusty, send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com and we'll get them answered on an upcoming show.

We'll see you next time.

Good night.