When deadheading flowers, leave stems about 18″ long; in other words, don’t cut them down you the ground. Many bees can use them for as nesting sites. They will lay an egg in the stem and then pack it with food, plugging it with grass or mud. Bees will also tunnel out stems like elderberry or, as in this case, Penstemon. Now, I know you are thinking, “But I don’t want ugly dead sticks in my garden”. Plants, like this Delphinium, will grow up around last year’s stems, concealing them with foliage and beautiful blooms.
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Planting for pollinator health is on every gardener’s mind these days. While there’s lots of research on how native plants help pollinators, there’s not much on the interaction of pollinators and annual flowers. What annual flowers attract pollinators? We want to find out, so we designed these trials to address how home gardeners might help reverse pollinator decline.
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One thing to note is that the bee life cycle takes a full year. Year one: stems grow, year two, bees lay eggs, year three eggs hatch. The stems need to be kept in tact thru egg hatch the 3rd season.
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