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Pollinator plants at May 7 sale
Our next “first Friday of the month” plant sale will be May 7, and we will have some 1-gallon containers with a pollinator mix of three wildflower species for $10 or two species for $8. These flowers will continue to self-seed and beautify your yard, saving you time and effort.
Also available are Seaside goldenrod, frostweed, milkweed, blanket flower, sunshine mimosa, amaryllis and bright orange cosmos. Visit us at the Brevard Discovery Garden, next to our office at 3695 Lake Drive in Cocoa, from 10 am until noon. Bring your mask, and remember that only cash and checks will be accepted. To keep up to date on the Brevard Discovery Garden’s upcoming events and activities, check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/BrevardDiscoveryGarden.
As winter comes to an end and the weather begins to warm, the buzzing of bees will increase.
Instead of focusing on the well-known European honeybees, which live in large hives, this article is about our native solitary bees. There are more than 3,500 species of solitary bees in North America, with approximately 315 of these efficient pollinator species living here in Florida.
Solitary bees have many advantages over honeybees as pollinators. They fly rapidly, pollinate more plants, typically don’t sting, work on cloudy days, start earlier in the morning (as in 7 a.m. or earlier), and work later in the afternoon.
Last April, I watched a webinar titled A Guide to Restoring the Little Things that Run the World, presented by Doug Tallamy and hosted by the Florida Wildflower Foundation.
The information presented was new to me and very eye-opening. The gist is that insects are at the base of the terrestrial food web, and insect populations are already at dangerously low levels. Supporting both our migratory and local birds plus our native bees is crucial, so this article will help Brevard County residents to do just that.
Brevard County is known throughout the United States, and around the world, for the Space Coast Birding Festival, so imagine how our yards (and parks, golf courses, etc.) collectively could support the Birding Festival next year.