From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. We talk about pollinator gardens and seek out the plants that provide that essential nourishment to bees and butterflies and moths, for example. But insects do not live by pollen alone. To make our gardens places of life-sustaining habitat, we have to provide for other needs too, like water, for example, and shelter in each season of the year and more. A new book called Natural Habitats and Wildlife Gardening, inviting nature into your backyard by today's guest, Sean McCosham, provides inspiration for doing just that. So more in a moment, but first these messages. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, web colorblends.com The MMO Project verified on the web, highmoingseeds.com, and by Whiteflower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants on the web, whiteflowerform.com. Sean is a landscape ecologist, conservationist, pollinator researcher and writer who has worked on green energy initiatives, conservation projects and habitat plans across the United States. His new book is Natural Habitats and Wildlife Gardening. I'm glad to welcome him to the program today. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. And where are you? Where are we talking from? Where are you? So I moved to Corpus Christi, Texas about two years ago. That's your natural habitat right now, okay, good. Yeah. I remember, first of all, I should be before we get started, I should say that we'll do a book giveaway with the transcript of the show over on away to garden.com. So, but I remember talk you did. Maybe it was like last year that I believe is now posted on your YouTube channel and I'll provide a link to that for people with the transcript as well. It was called Beyond Plant Lists, which is kind of perfect. And we do have to go beyond plant lists to make a garden that's a complex sort of living organism or system don't we? Not just a flower bed, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes.

So that's kind of the premise. Is that kind of the... When I took away from the book and there's

a lot of science in the book and there's a lot of other habitats that I don't know about,

you know, deserts and whatever, and you know, there's things for all areas of the country and so forth.

But that's what I was one of the overarching things that I took was that I have to do more than feed them. Yes, you know, moving beyond plantless was a really good talk because for that specific audience, it was for mostly gardeners. And we were really able to talk about how rock-scaping, borders, logs, bird houses, all these things play into creating habitat inside of our gardens. And typically when we think about creating a palm-meter garden, we see these articles that say plant this, plant that, but it doesn't say also provide shelter. You know, like for monarchs is a good example plant milkweed for monarchs, because it's a host plant and they'll nectar on the flowers. It is a fantastic plant, but those Monarchs need to get off

the plant to shed their skin between each caterpillar stage and then they need to save place to pupate. So they typically won't do that on the plant because as it's getting eaten, it's going to expose them to the sunlight. So they want to be in a place where they're going to be less likely to be found by predators, but also not exposed to the sun.

So by providing a diversity of plants or hiding places and shelter. a place where they're going to be less likely to be found by predators, but also not exposed to the sun.

So by providing a diversity of plants or hiding places and shelter, we create a better habitat and increase the survival likelihood of all of the animals we're trying to support. Right. Well, and so for instance, we all are thinking about obese. I want to attract the bees and they're pollinating and blah, blah, blah. So a lot of times we're shopping the catalog right at the nursery for perennials with flowers and so forth. We know about one having extended period of bloom, not just one minute in the garden season and so forth and that's all good. But then what else do the bees need for example? We don't really think about that. There's so many different species of bees, so that is another thing altogether, but can we use them as an example too? Oh, 100%. So the native bees, if we're looking at North America, we've about 4,000 species of native bees. About 70% of those are ground nesters, and surprisingly, scientists don't have a lot of data for which areas in the ground bees like to nest. Out of the entire 20,000 species in the world, we've only described about 500 species nesting habitats, and most of those are not in ground. So of the ones that are in the ground, we have found that they prefer sandy to clay soils. A number of our larger bees, like our digger bees, they like compacted clay. You'll find them in old bison trails, cattle trails, two track roads, or even running paths in some of our parks. Perditas, to be like sandy areas right next to the sidewalk where they can excavate and carry out those grains of sand that fit inside of their mandibles. And inside of our gardens, we're typically providing really good soils for plants to grow win, but that's not necessarily good nesting habitat for the native bees or trying to support. So then they're relegated to weird places around our landscape, sometimes next to the driveway, or next to the sidewalk, or a fence line. But if we intentionally understand that these sandy soils need to be provided, or these clay soils need to be provided, we can do it in areas like along our paths or around our HVAC units, but we can incorporate it into the design in a way that's attractive but also very useful to the animals instead of leaving them to chance to find the resource that they need. And a lot of people think, oh but I bought a B hotel. And you know, and I'm not a B-hotel person.

You don't mean that. I'm not as much of a gimmicky person as I am. I like to try to figure out something else and I've read and obviously the B-hotel works at least at first, but there's drawbacks, yes? Yes, absolutely. So with the B-hotels, we have to ask ourselves, what is it mimicking in nature? I mean, when was the last time you saw a bunch of bamboo tied up in a bunch naturally existing, right? Oh, it does, and I didn't know that. So if we look at where a lot of these cavity nesting bees, which are using those stem nests, those bea hotels, they're actually cavity nesting bees, not specifically stem nesting bees. And they typically would be utilizing old beetle burrows outside of dead wood. So things like serenbicity, which is a longhorn beetle or repressody, which are the metallic wood-boring beetles. When those larvae leave wood, they leave these clean tunnels that naturally would be utilized by many of the species that are going to utilize the bee hotels. Oh, but when we're talking about stem nesting bees and there's a lot of confusion between the bee hotels and stem nesting bees because we're using bamboo stems. Is a lot of stem nesting bees are actually excavating pits outside of the stems that they're using. And although a cavity nesting bee will utilize a hollow stem, inside of a healthy natural ecosystem, those little tiny hollow stems typically aren't the things that they would select for, unless you're talking about serotonas or a couple wasps. The majority of them are going to be utilizing the wood or crevices between rocks and building their hotels, not hotels. Building your health inside of those spaces, which are just being mimicked and centralized inside of the hotel. And can they also, the be hotels, can they sometimes, you know, they're not clean eventually or do you know what I mean? Correct, yeah. A few researchers have done long-term studies with be hotelsals. And in fact, in the 1960s and 70s, we were trying to create these walls of hotels around alpha fields because those bees need those cavities. And the first year, they get colonized and they're great and they get filled with bees second year. Typically, it has a pretty strong population, but by the third year, the pollen might become a problem and they spread and start eating all the pollen and then the larva starve. The parasitoids, the bees that take over those cells or eat the larva and then eat the pollen. Those populations grow and we've pretty much created this buffet for everything that eats bees because bees aren't really high up on the food chain. They're pretty low. So, yes you are right. The bee hotels do become a problem after a few years and we are supposed to clean them and replace them if we are utilizing them in our gardens. Yes. And being in a small neighborhood, it's hard to have the natural succession of, you know, wood forming beetles coming out of it and creating all those new hotels. So the bee hotels do have a place in our gardens, but they should be small and they do need to be replaced every few years, moved around. I recommend in the book, move them from corner to corner in your yard from year to year, so that any of those pollen mites or parasitoids at least have to do a little bit more work to find a new home for. And they're part of the ecosystem too. You said the word succession and in a bigger sense, you know, kind of early in the book I believe it is, you remind us that you natural habitats, you know, wild spaces, whatever. They often comprise various stages of succession. It's not all freshly planted stuff like a a brand new flower bed that I just planted, right, with stuff from the nursery, or it's not all just pollinator plants. It's, you know, there's decay in there, and there's a half dead, something or other, and there's, you know, there's things in various stages and ages and so forth. And I think our gardens often lack that as well, don't they? The idea of succession. Yes, I fully agree with that. And in the book, I worked with some amazing photographers and there's some really solid photos of like post-burned meadows where the trees are still standing and that would be the habitat that the bees would be nesting in or the resource that the bees would be nesting in and Mars would be pupating and beetles would be developing. But then you have these beautiful you know flocks and lark spurs and loop ins growing in between these dead trees which is what we typically plant inside of our yards. So I like to show that that juxtaposition of those two kind of ideas that the plants were putting in our yard in their natural habitat have these other resources that so many of the wildlife were trying to support depend on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and again, I said the word decay, and that's in the book. And it's, you know, it sounds like a negative word, right? Decay.

That's bad. Ooh, I don't want to decay. Right. But it sounds like a something for you to go to the dentist about. Right? But, but, but that's not what it is. It's part of the life cycle. And it's such a critically important aspect of it. As for example, even as hardworking as woodpeckers are who are happy to and I use that I anthropomorphize I'm sorry happy but anyway they're out there and they're gonna you know make a cavity and and someone else may decide to use it at some point you know maybe lucky enough to use it and it's fantastic. All those sort of pass along habitats, habitats that they provide for other creatures. However, if we don't have trees that are in a condition that the woodpecker listens and scopes out and says, this is a good one, and then go ahead and start excavating. You know what I mean? It's like if we take down and clean up and erase every declining dead and dying tree, well, there's not as many opportunities for even the woodpeckers to do their good job, I think. Right. And we see that decline in or that affecting the populations of animals and seeing a decline in cavity

nesting birds and fungus that live in these woods that chicken of the woods is big in the northeast. People like to go in forage for it. You can cook it. It's bright orange. It's gorgeous. And it depends on dead wood that has sat for a while and started to decay in that my It's Helium's able to grow through it.

And it's so that whole log that we call dead is so alive with insects and fungus and bacteria and all these different things that are utilizing it that I wish we could change that vernacular from dead wood to, you know, living ecosystem of, you know, previous trees or something. We clearly don't have the English term for it. But in the book, I try and bring that into our landscaping designs too, that we can bring in, you know, log borders, we can bring in bird boxes that mimic these hollow stems, we can bring in bat boxes. And we see this regularly when we go to the store that we're trying to mimic some of these resources, but there's so many animals and plants that depend on the nutrient cycles of that wood breaking down that are really important to bring in some of those larger pieces of downed wood and lay them in our yards and use them as part of the landscape to create a whole habitat for the organisms that we're trying to support. And if we have a declining or a data or a fallen, you know, whatever tree, then Welcome it if you know you don't even incorporate it. Welcome it. Don't don't cast it out. Don't hire someone and pay money to Again erase it I think of them as but you said we need a good word. I think of it as biomass because it makes me remember that it's alive in a way. Do you know what I mean? I say biomass. Yeah, but you know, all you have to do is have watched, I had a big old birch tree out in the backyard that was here long before I ever was and it started to climb and I turned into a snag and then, you know, to climb in less than 10 years in that condition or maybe seven years in that condition and then finally it was getting wonky and took more of it down, you know, stabilize it and but lay these big, this big piece next to the root system and I'm, I mean, the pilliated woodpecker, he was happy to be using the part that was on the ground. He didn't mind it wasn't standing up anymore. He was happy for months. Do you know what I mean? And then there's all these unseen organisms, probably billions of them, that were happy too. And again, I'm anthropomorphizing galore. That's my thing. Everybody's happy. It's good to do. It helps us connect with the nature to empathize and put some of the emotions with these animals and plants even Well, I would peckers always look happy to me for some reason. They're so so charismatic aren't they charismatic? They really are. I love seeing them so much energy Yeah, but yeah, so introducing some of these things and again not thinking oh decay oh dead, decay, oh dead, oh, you know, but thinking, oh, wow, this is life sustaining. You know, this is part of the cycle, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that you point out in the book that the practice of leave, the leaves that's become so popular in recent years, that's a practice of decay, yes, of celebrating decay, of welcoming decay, yes. Yes, 100, like, so important to the overall ecosystem to leave the biomass that falls inside of our yards because it's feeding nutrient cycles, but that's with the caveat. So if you have a giant oak tree and a full sun meadow that you've planted and cared for and you have, you know, like, toad-flacks growing in there are phylaspecies and short milk weeds, those plants can't really grow through a thick layer of leaf. So when we are keeping those leaves on our property, we want to make sure they're ending up in areas that can be utilizes habitat, but also not suppress any of the plant growth because trees are also fighting off other plants from growing. So part of that leaf fall is to suppress other plants from growing. So we don't want to, you know, utilize that natural cycle and then accidentally interrupt the overall goal that we had for our garden as well. Right. One point that you make in the book that I loved especially is that, you know, when we're thinking about making a garden or evolving our garden, if we already have an established one, we should have in mind what organism or a couple of organisms, what creatures we're intending to welcome. most because not everybody wants the same things, not everybody requires the same things. And, you know, so to me, that's really important. And when I first started making my garden decades ago, I was fascinated by birds and I thought about birds. and I noticed and I had no knowledge really but I noticed I mean I bought a bunch of bird books but But I noticed that there was a lot of action along the fringes where like the at the edge of the property where the tree line was where there were also some You know naturally occurring shrubs and vines and whatever kind of of a tangly areas, you know, the messy areas

that there was a lot of action in there.

And I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna make

some big shrub borders, I'm gonna get a lot of shrubs

and especially ones with fruit, you know,

and especially native ones.

And anyway, so these big sort of, I call them bio hedges

or shrubberies, whatever they are,

I mean, they're just these wonderful places filled with birds,

a lot of the time, especially when the fruit is there, and filled with pollinators when the shrubs are flowering earlier on. But I think shrubs are one of the plants. We're all attracted to, oh, let's go get some pollinator plants, and we think perennials. We think asters, and we think you know, Rebecca and we think of Ganesha and so forth.

But I think shrubs are really important too, yes? Yes, shrubs are one of the major declining vegetation structures in general. So shrub lanes are typically not managed for because they're really difficult to manage, especially in a large scale. And the few places that we find them consistently inside the landscape anymore is energy right of ways where they go in moe every five or six years. But trying to get big machinery through, it's typically easier to do that through a meadow, so you mo everything down, or really tall trees, and you have spaced out open canopy forests. So adding the shrubs to our landscape is very important because they're missing from the general landscape. And they do provide host plants for many of our pollinators. They feed a lot of our insects for the native shrubs. And then the very producing ones are going to create food resources for migrating birds in our winter surviving birds as well. Yes. Yeah. And again, if there are another are another layer, like especially adjacent to like the edge of if you have large trees in there, the next layer down, so to speak, now you know, there's um, understory trees and then shrubs and herbaceous stuff down below. Those that edge habitat, that eca ton is like where the action is a lot of times, both within sex and birds insects and birds at least that's my amateur observation. There's a lot going on there. Yes. In those layered areas as opposed to shrub in the middle of a piece of lawn or tree in the middle of a piece of lawn, you know, that's not so much action. I agree. Yeah, I see that as well. And part of that is that that structure is also creating some wind break. So a lot of the insects on windy or days can fly in that space because they're not getting blown away. Versus next to that shrub around all that mold grass when the wind is blowing, if you're like a Perdita bee of one of the smallest bees or the genus of the smallest bees, they probably can't fly more than 15 miles per hour.

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