More biodiversity, more pollinators

Planting a thousand perennials in McCauley

Community members share their "back home" gardening knowledge with the writer. | Gail Silvius

Community members and enthusiastic volunteers gathered at McCauley Community Orchard on September 21 to increase the local biodiversity by planting 1,000 perennials. This large-scale community planting project was supported by the contributions of Foresters Financial (a life insurance company that gives back to its community through projects like food forests) and 5th World (a company that designs and builds regenerative properties, from food forests to passive solar greenhouses).

The Orchard has been under the stewardship of Sustainable Food Edmonton for the last couple of years, building on the work of Operation Fruit Rescue and supporting neighbourhood volunteers and organizations. They are building an understory of native plants to create more habitat for pollinators and more biodiversity. My neighbour Reuben Quinn shared a Cree word: manicos (pronounced mah-nee-chos): “insects are little creators.”

Ibrahim Ali helps out with planting "2 billion trees." | Gail Silvius

People can support these little creators by planting species that give them homes and allow them to do their work.

The 5th World regenerative agriculture folks designed the understory with the manicos in mind. Each species of plant provides some food or shelter for the small creators.The variety of plants chosen will provide blooms from May through October, attracting a variety of pollinators and beneficial insects. As fall and winter arrive, the perennials will be dormant and revive again in the spring.   

Patty Milligan, agriculture educator at the Edmonton Urban Farm, explains what these pollinators do. 

“Insects, especially bees, love to visit the flowers of plants, usually to eat nectar. While they are sipping that sweet liquid, they will get pollen grains on their bodies that they then carry to another flower,” says Milligan.

Bees have special hairs and other structures on their bodies to carry the pollen and feed it to their larvae. The pollen grains they carry to other flowers will fertilise them and enable seeds to develop. 

Milligan says there is an intricate and valuable dance between bees, flowers, and humans. A dance that allows bees to feed themselves and their babies, flowers to reproduce and create seeds, and humans — among other creatures — to eat fruits and vegetables.