(gentle music) I have been reading about bee lawns and also a program called Lawns to Legumes over the last several years.

And then at the greenhouse where I work, we started to carry a new product called a Bee Lawn Mix.

I'm Mary Holm, host a Prairie Yard and Garden, and as Shakespeare said, "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Today in regard to bee lawns, let's go find some answers.

- [Announcer] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) Some of our friends take great pride in keeping their lawns neat, weed-free and beautiful.

A few years ago, I attended a seminar where the presenter said, "It is okay to have some weeds in your yard because it is good for the bees and the pollinators."

Then I started to read about bee lawns and wanted to find out more about this new trend.

When it comes to anything about grasses, I know just who to turn to for answers.

I contacted my friend Mary Meyer who said, "Sure, come for a visit."

Welcome, Mary.

- Thank you, Mary, so glad you could be here today on our bee lawn demonstration at the arboretum.

- Mary, tell me about your background.

- Oh, well I do love grasses and all things grasses.

I've worked on grasses for a long time.

My whole career on grass, but usually uncut grass, but I am very interested in alternative lawns and new things, different things, good environmentally things that we can do for our lawn, so bee lawns fit that bill.

- What is a bee lawn?

- Well, it is a lawn that has flowers for bees and pollinators.

Now we are not necessarily having hives of bee here, and the first year when we planted it, people came out to see the bee lawn and said, "Where are the be hives?"

And I said, "Well, this is not really to grow or manage bees, honey bees per se, but it's to provide food for bees in plants that you could use on a lawn."

So some people misunderstood what we were doing, but it's really growing a lawn with plants that it provides forage for bees and butterflies.

- How many native bees do we have in Minnesota?

- Oh, this could be a trick question.

This could be a trick question for you to ask for listeners because most people get the number way lower than what is.

It's about 450, so that's an astounding number, and of course, honeybees are not really natives, but they have lived here so long they have adapted well and of course we use them to pollinate a lot of our food crops.

But not counting honeybees, we have 450 native bees, which are often, they're so tiny, many of them, they are tiny they're big, but people often don't even see them.

They will miss them because they're so small and so they kind of go under the radar a lot and I think that's why people are surprised there's so many native ones.

- What has caused their decline and have all of them been declining or just some species?

- Some more than others, but overall they've all declined because of, I think basically because of habitat loss.

So there used to be a lot more area where bees could live or the forage, the plants that they feed on, would live, but today you don't see that as much.

Farmers have incentives not to have any hedge rows where there're pollinator plants.

There are some farmers who conservation areas, but there's also more money in crops, to raise crops, so the incentives have been there for farmers to not have as much wild area so the habitat loss is an issue.

Use of herbicides, a lot of people talk about that.

That kind of goes hand in hand with that.

There are more people, there are more of us and there are more houses and developments and things so I think overall it's loss of habitat that's really reduced the number of native pollinators.

- [Mary Holm] So what are the advantages of doing a bee lawn?

- [Mary Meyer] Having diversity in a lawn is really good for the environment and so if you have a monoculture of just grass, you're gonna have to use more fertilizer than if you have white clover that can provide nitrogen and you are not providing any food for pollinators, so it's not a very good landscape to have just a lawn in terms of the whole ecosystem and services, et cetera.

So if you have a bee lawn, it's much better for the environment in that you can use less fertilizer.

If you use the fine fescue that we use, that's low water requirement, and then the food for the pollinators is also, it's a benefit for the environment.

- [Mary Holm] So what are the disadvantages?

- Well, some people think that white clover is a weed, but white Clover is really a great, great plant because it fixes nitrogen and that fixing nitrogen and making it available to the grass and the other plants there is it's really low maintenance.

And if you think of, oh, the landscapes of my parents or grandparents, they had white clover.

They were happy with white clover.

They didn't mind it out there and they really found that quite acceptable.

So I think the one big disadvantage is people have to really think about the appearance.

Are you okay with some non-grass in your lawn.

The appearance is the first thing.

And then we do have a lot of people come ask about getting stung.

Yeah, "Am I gonna get stung from all these bees?"

And I really have never seen any evidence that you will.

A lot of these bees are small and not interested in us and not really stinging, what we think of as stinging bees.

And you know, we're not talking really here about attracting yellow jackets or wasps or hornets and those are our more troublesome insects, especially at the late end of the summertime.

So the honey bees, the other small native bees, are not really ones that we think of stinging a lot of people so to date, we don't have a lot of evidence that that's an issue.

- [Mary Holm] Well, and you have oodles of visitors here at the arboretum too and so you would know.

- [Mary Meyer] We would know.

We also have planted a bee lawn up at our bee and pollinator center and that is an area where we have a lot of landscape plants, trees, shrubs, as well as flowers for bees.

That's where we have the beehives that people can see at the arboretum, and so the lawn area there, we did plant the bee lawn with the clover, the thyme, and the prunella.

And so that's another big demonstration area and that's an outdoor kind of a nice recreation area where people could see the bee lawn also.

(acoustic guitar music) Even from a distance, you know a farmers market, the sights, the sounds and the smells.

The rainbow of fruits and vegetables, all neatly arranged in boxes.

The scent of fresh-baked pastries drifting on the breeze.

Jars of jellies and jams, and best of all, plenty of farmers and producers to tell us more about the food they grow.

While we tend to think of a farmers market as a place to buy delicious produce, it's also a great place to make relationships with local farmers and ask questions about how your food is grown.

A farmers market is delightful and it's a great way to spend an afternoon supporting your local economy and celebrating the healthy food that brings our community together.

Today I'm at the University of Minnesota, Morris, sampling some of the wares from the West Central part of our state.

- I think my favorite thing about a farmers market is the high quality of the products and everything that I like to buy here and I also really enjoy talking to the people who are selling 'cause like they're people in the community and I really like talking to them.

- I think during COVID a lot of, I guess, bigger corporations were disrupted and so people could not get a lot of things that they wanted to get in grocery stores and also a lot of small businesses we're struggling during COVID and so it's important to buy from them and it's kind of a give and take type of thing.

We help our small communities and they give back to us.

- I think it's important to know the producer because they're a lot more involved being like a smaller business.

They're gonna know everything about the product that you're getting, so therefore it would be a lot healthier for you.

You're gonna know more about what you're putting into your body.

- I like to sell at the farmer's market because I like to share what I grow and produce on my farm with all the wonderful customers we get to see each week.

- Throughout the summer and fall, a farmers market is the perfect to pick up some yummy treats and farm-fresh produce to make a healthy meal for you and your family.

Visit MinnesotaGrown.com for a list of over 200 farmers markets in Minnesota.

There is certain to be one near you.

Mary, what are the steps to establishing a bee lawn?

- Well, that is one of the questions we set out to answer.

We have five different plots here and the first one, we just put the flower seed down on an existing lawn.

That's like the easiest way, would that work?

And then the next one we scalped it.

We actually cut it down as low as we could and then we put the seed on.

The third one, we renovated completely.

We got rid of, killed everything there, got rid of all the dross, had just bare soil, and then we put down the flowers and grass seed.

Then number four, we cut it down really, really low and aerated it and put the seed on.

And then number five, we just aerated it and put the seed on.

So we tried to go from less work to more work to see what would work.

And so then we've compared these.

Now this is our sixth summer of looking at these.

So the best results so far have still been the scalping, and then if you can scalp an aerate, that's good.

The next best was total renovation.

And the least effective has been just throwing out the seed, so as one would expect, but if you have some bare soil now in your lawn, you can rake, specifically rake those areas with a garden rake and clover and thyme and prunella, those are the three.

We use white clover, creeping thyme, which is Thymus serpyllum.

That's a different time than our culinary thyme.

And then Prunella vulgaris or self heal.

That's a native.

The other two, thyme and white clover, are not natives, but those three flowers are what we used, and then on some of the plots we used fine fescues.

So we did a combination of those in putting these down, but if I had to say right now, what's the best way to do it, if you already have a lawn, cut it down as low as you can stand, which is scalping, like one inch or less, and then if you can aerate it to make those holes, and then put the seed down and water it for two weeks, that's what we did, then I think you'll get some good results.

- [Mary Holm] So you didn't actually till up the whole area then.

- [Mary Meyer] No, just one of the plots we did that.

And that tilling up the whole area, we used glyphosate a Roundup, so we killed everything that was here.

What was here to begin with?

This is more of a farm field with pasture grasses, quackgrass, orchardgrass, things like that.

There's some fescue and Kentucky bluegrass, but it's kind of a field area.

So in one of our demonstration plots, we got rid of everything, down to clear soil.

And the first year that looked the worst because that came, what came up was all the weed seed, foxtail, some quackgrass came up, Kentucky bluegrass, but the next year it kind of looked okay.

And right now today, six years later, this plot has the most of the fine fescue and a lot of thyme and has it has prunella and it has white clover.

So this is looking pretty good, but overall, I still would advocate for scalping short, aerating, and then putting down your seed.

- Mary, what is the grass that you use to mix along in with the bee lawn?

- Well, we used fine fescue and there are a lot of different fine fescues, sheeps fescue, chewing red, creeping fescue, hard fescue.

Any of the fine fescues are really good choices to use if you wanna do a bee lawn because they're slow growing and they're very drought tolerant.

They're low maintenance grasses.

We do thing of them a lot for shade and they're good in shade, but they're great in sun.

They go both ways, shade and sun.

So fine fescue is a really good choice to use because it won't compete, especially if you're not watering and not fertilizing.

And those kind of go hand in hand with a bee lawn.

They are for people who want a lower maintenance lawn.

- Why did you choose the flower species that you did?

- That's another very good question and Ian Lane was a grad student and then James Wolfen, they both did a lot of experiments on cutting different grasses and what flower when they were cut.

So as we know, a lot of things don't flower when you keep repetitively cutting them off.

So what would still flower?

And that's how we came up with the white clover.

And then the creeping thyme, that's kind of threw me off because I've had thyme die in my garden, many years, many Minnesotans have, but this thyme is serpyllum.

It's a very robust type of thyme and it's very fine seed.

We put down the seed, but at first, the first year or two, I thought that's not gonna live, it's not gonna live.

And now six years later, you can see there are huge carpets of the thyme that's here.

So a little slow to begin, but long, it's very, very good.

And the third, prunella, prunella is a plant that is native in Minnesota.

It is in the mint family, which can be quite aggressive, but it's not as aggressive as creeping Charlie or even the heal-all which we do weed out of our lawns and gardens.

So prunella is, it's persistent and it will flower on and off through the summer.

It's the flower that we have the least of in the lawns overall that has not done as well, but it provides wonderful food for bees.

- When is the best time, if you wanna try to establish a bee lawn, when is the best time of year to do that?

- Well, we did it June.

So springtime is good.

Now we don't think of that as the best time for lawn grasses, but we wanted these flowers to establish so that's why we did it in June.

And then we put irrigation on here.

We kept the water on for two weeks, every other day or every other day, if it was hot and after two weeks it was over.

We have never watered in here again.

- [Marry Holm] Can you do this in the shade too or does it have to be in the sun?

- [Mary Meyer] Well, the flowers will do better in the sun.

The fine fescue is, that's pretty much okay for shady areas, but the sun, you get more flowers in the sun, so it grows better in the sun.

- Mary, how do you mow and care for this bee lawn?

- So we try to let it go to six inches and then we cut it to four.

So that one third cut rule of thumb, we still try to maintain that.

That four inches is higher, but that's a good amount, that's a nice height to get a lot, as many flowers as possible on the flowers.

- Does this lawn go dormant in the summer like a bluegrass lawn often does when it gets hot and dry?

- A little bit, but the flowers, especially the thyme, has a good heat tolerance and drought tolerance.

You know, that is one of the herbs that has a drought tolerance, so it's not as brown as sometimes the lawns are as well.

- How about those goofy dandelions or other weeds?

- Yeah, so if you don't like dandelions or broadleaf plantain, maybe knotweed that comes in, you can spot treat for those.

So if you want to spot treat or do hand weeding, that's what we recommend.

But of course, any broadleaf herbicide is gonna kill the thyme, the prunella and the white clover's a little bit more tolerant, but it still will be set back from a broadleaf herbicide so you basically don't use a herbicide on a bee lawn and you do spot treatment for plants that you don't want.

- Do you do that in the spring, summer or fall, or just kind of whenever it works for you?

- Whenever it works for you.

I think most people are bothered by the dandelions in the springtime, but whenever, whenever you see the most there and that it's in accordance with the directions on the label for the temperature and what you're using, how you're using it.

So as far as other concerns like pests or diseases, a lot of people are concerned about grubs or insects on the lawn, we see none of that with a bee lawn because many of those things feed on turf or grasses and we are putting in non-grasses so there really very few other pest or disease problems with a bee lawn.

- Mary I've heard or read about the Lawn to Legumes program.

What is that all about?

- Yeah, that's an amazing program where Minnesota's leading the nation in actually putting in bee lawns or legumes like our white clover and so on from a homeowner standpoint and a community standpoint.

So we actually had legislation laws that made money available to individuals and communities to put in bee lawns, so that's very progressive and different thinking than a lot of other states.

So as an individual, I could've gotten up to $350.

I had to match that 25% if I would've participated, but it's to buy the plants, to buy the materials, to have a consultant maybe even advise you or help you to get your bee lawn in.

And then as a community, the money was much more from 2,000 to $40,000 in a community effort, public spaces or parks or schools.

So both of those programs were great.

It's an amazing online resource.

So you can find out how to put it a bee lawn.

Online there's lots of directions and information.

There are pocket plantings, there are tree and shrub plantings, and then there are prairie plantings.

So there's four different ways in your own landscape you can increase the area for pollinators.

(classy piano music) I have a question.

Are there any endangered plants in Minnesota?

- There are several endangered plants in Minnesota, yes.

One of the plants that we're working with here at the arboretum is here along our bog boardwalk, it's this ladder-shaped leaf that you kind of see around here.

It's Western Jacob's Ladder and it is one of the rarer plants in the state in that there's only four populations of it, four known populations of it in the state.

We are working with the conservation of it and we work with it similar to some groups.

We do monitoring.

We will go out to the populations and we will survey the populations and track them and make sure they are still sticking around.

But another thing that we do is we bank the genetics here at the arboretum.

Plants have a really neat way of long-term ensuring their survival and those are seeds.

And so what we do is we go to these rare plant populations, like the Jacobs Ladder, we go collect seed, bring them back to the arboretum, prepare them and put them in our long-term storage, making sure that these populations can survive catastrophic loss, climate change, something like that.

If they were to disappear, we should be able to put them back.

- [Announcer] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to enriching lives through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

- Mary, do you have to be worried at all about local city regulations or homeowner regulations and ordinances?

- Yes, you really do because that varies from city to city and it's really wise for you to look up on your city's webpage and see what the restrictions are, if any, to doing a pollinator lawn or a bee lawn.

Now, a bee lawn, I doubt if there's anybody gonna have issue with that because that's, most people are gonna cut that like they do a regular lawn, but if you are planting something that's tall or would be in a sight line for anybody driving on the street or anything like that, you should be very aware of what the ordinances are in your city.

- When it comes to natives, do you have to worry about the plants spreading to a neighbor's place?

- Oh, that's a good question.

The prunella's not gonna spread, maybe the thyme, if everything is perfect, and the white clover might.

So I think the best thing to do is to really talk to your neighbor.

When you're planting a lawn like this, if your neighbor is someone who doesn't have anything but grass in their lawn, you might wanna have a border of a few feet at the edge of your property where you start your own bee lawn back from theirs.

So giving yourself a border will help and then talking with your neighbor and telling them what you're doing, they might be interested also.

And if they have kids, kids or adults, everybody should be interested, but kids have a lot of fun looking for bees and butterflies in a bee lawn.

- Where can people go to get more information about doing a Lawn to Legumes program?

- So you can, if you just Google Lawns to Legumes, that will come up and then also the other great resource is the bee lab at the University of Minnesota.

So the bee lab with Marla Spivak has done a lot of work on which plants are the best for which bees.

And so we know that there are a lot of species that use white clover.

Prunella has a lot of pollen as well as nectar.

So the specific studies with the insects, Marla Spivak and her grad students have done great work.

They've also done work in the city of Minneapolis and they've put in bee lawns in public areas in the city of Minneapolis.

They've had seminars and webinars for park superintendents and people to put these in, in more commercial settings.

So there is a handbook for how to do that that's up online and that's available at the bee lab.

- So do you have any recommendations, last recommendations for people if they wanna try to do this?

- Yeah, I think people should really consider it.

If you're nervous about the appearance, come look at what the arboretum's looks like, but I think for people it's really easy and the easy way is just plant white clover.

The simplest thing is if you have a couple bare spots, get some white clover seed and that's an easy way to start.

- [Mary Holm] Thank you so much.

This has been so interesting and I just appreciate your help so much.

- Happy to talk with you, Mary.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in an honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music)