Garden Templates

This work as done as a University of Maryland Extension - Master Gardener volunteer. It is an extensive database and toolset that produces Garden Templates and Interpretation Guides based on extensive research and the source Garden drawing / plant list.

Creating A Garden Atlas for Pollinators and Natives Just Got Easier

Sample

Pollinators

Food and Shelter Descriptions

Creating A Garden Atlas for Pollinators and Natives Just Got Easier

[As Master Gardeners for the University of Maryland Extension office...] We’ve all had a time when someone says, “Can you just tell me the answer please?”

Setting up a new garden can be intimidating to our clients. As [Master Gardeners], we often wish we had an easier way to provide more guidance to questions like “What should I plant where?”. We want to try to make the process a little easier and match the desire for more organized, on-line content.

The Pollinator and Native Landscape committee has put together some tools to create a simple garden atlas.

The atlas is tailored to the particular garden, has information about specific pollinators, links to credible resources like Missouri Botanical Garden, Maryland & Virginia Plant Atlas, Butterflies and Moths of North America, etc. The program was designed to be as visual as possible. We’ve built in sections that highlight the host and phenology ties of plants and pollinators as well as a gardening guide and local nativity information.

We start with a list of plants and a hand sketch, and with a little effort come up with the guides you can find on our ‘Garden Templates’ tab under ‘Resources’ on the UME Pollinator and Native Landscape site:

https://extension.umd.edu/mg/locations/howard-county-master-gardeners

The information behind the templates are based on over a year’s research of local nativity and plant-insect interactions. We’ve grateful for all the help we’ve been given by our committee and especially Drs. Droege, Tallamay, Fowler, Frye, Moreman, Weakley; Kerry Wixted, Judy Fulton and Joyce Jadik.

If you’d like to share a garden plan or learn more about your garden, please let us know. We’d be happy to help.

Much thanks for all that you do!

John Jadik, MG 2018

(source - LooseLeaf Jul/Aug 2020 - A publication of the University of Maryland Extension - Howard County Master Gardeners)

Sample

This is a sample Pollinator Garden for Monaches. These six pages are from the extended template for Master Gardeners. Homeowners have a shorter two-page template. These are offered in English, Spanish, French, Ukranian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Hindi and Amharic.

All off the entries are science-based thanks to the support of countless hours of researchers and volunteers. These templates are replete with embedded hyperlinks to get you directly to authoritative sources on plants, insects, gardening resources and the source document for the garden design.

Garden growing conditions are provided for each plant (green sections).

The plant phonology (bloom times), insect (flight times) and (bird nexting times) are provided as simple color-coded graphics.

Local Nativity (down to the Maryland County) is provided where available (yellow sections).

Native American Use (orange sections).

Host relationships and timelines for Butterflies, Moths and Bees (blue sections).

Related birds - their relationships and timelines (purple sections).

Pollinators

Pollinator Gardens

Birds

Bird Gardens

Meadows

Native Landscaping

Rain Gardens

Buffers

Forrest and Waterway Buffers

Behind the Scenes

These is built on object-oriented programming supported by Micrsoft. Each template only requires a simple plant layout in PowerPoint, a list of plants and the descriptive text you'd like to add. All the lookup, linking, plant-insect relationship mapping, phenology, flight times, formatting, color-coding and translations are done by the database.

Client Gardens

Much thanks for our fellow gardeners for sharing their Garden Designs, Stories and Pictures.

Pilot Program

If you're interested to learn more about your existing or planned native and/or pollinator garden, please consider joining our Pilot Program.

Legend

Food and Shelter Descriptions

The Maryalnd Pollinator Atlas Food and Sheleter for Animals is given based on research and data from extension offices, authoritztive society and other reputatble sources. A current list is given here.