17-T18

Welcome to the T18 Pollinator Garden Webpage!

Project Rationale

In our first meeting with our client, she said she had no particular plants in mind she just wanted lots of color and diversity. We have met these requests by adding flowers in various colors such as green, white, yellow, purple and pink. We have also included lots of diversity with plants very different from each other such as prairie violets, prairie smokes, rattlebox, prairie oval sedge, and heath aster. This diversity stems from a wider range of pollinators attracted to our gardens, such as hummingbirds bumblebees. Our client also specified that she didn’t want any plants that would stick or prick anyone/anything that might be in or around the garden. So we made sure to not include any plants that will fall off or attach onto someone such as burrs. We have made sure that the taller plants will not block sun from the shorter plants by placing them around the rock and not in any areas in front of shorter plants. As a result, our taller grasses, such as prairie blazingstar, in the middle of our garden location. Most of the sunlight will be coming from the South, West, and East so our shorter plants are on the South, West, and East edges of the garden. We made sure to place the plants that require the most light in the areas where the most light is received.

There are two main challenges we will be facing while planting our garden. One is a small tree that our client asked us to remove. The tree is only about 3 feet tall but it’s roots will most likely go very deep and require lots of digging to remove. Also, a site visit with Iowa One Call revealed that there is a telephone cable line that goes right through our garden location. However, it is expected to be a foot deep, so that shouldn’t be a large problem with the actual planting procedures. Also, the location is placed on a slight slope, so that might make the planting location somewhat drier.

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