Building a pollinator friendly and pollution cleaning garden?

May 9, 2019 11:39 AM

Friend of mine has a plot of land in Brooklyn, NY (zone 6b) they are looking to turn into a native plant, pollinator attracting and pollution scrubbing garden. He’s already reaching out to groups like GrowNYC and Greentumb, but what are some of the best practices, plants, and designs he should look into to maximize the effect in a smallish urban space? They’re not looking into growing food for eating.
posted by The Whelk to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

They might look into making it a certified habitat through The National Wildlife Federation. The elements are Food, Water, Cover, Places to Raise Young, and Sustainable Practices.
posted by exogenous at 11:44 AM on May 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Some archived WH tips on starting a community garden here, which include links to resources on soil testing and what plants do best in your friend's locale, which might be intersected with lists of pollinator-friendly vegetation (that should optimally be matched to the type of soil that you have, or can adjust).

Here's a flowchart from Seattle on the process of starting a neighborhood p-patch garden (which is generic, not necessarily focusing on growing food crops).
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:12 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

In my experience, native plant societies are the best for this stuff. The Long Island Native Plant Initiative sounds pretty valuable.

This book seems useful too.
posted by saladin at 1:05 PM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

Is your friend's patch on any migratory routes? Down here in/around DC, we're on a butterfly migration route, so there's a big push to plant milkweed (since that's the butterfly's only food source and is a native plant). Arlington County in Virginia also has some pocket parks and other public areas that are designed to be specifically suited to some of the migratory bird species that come through here. Creating an oasis for migrating animals/insects is apparently very important in urban areas because if the migrating species can't find food or rest on their route, that could be catastrophic for them.

This might be irrelevant because I'm basing it on my experience in Northern Virginia, but this is the kind of thing that the local nature centers and naturalists literally teach classes on down here (the program is called Master Naturalists). Local nature centers and naturalists could be a great resource for your friends, too? They are likely to know a lot about how your friends should plant their space to be as nature-friendly as possible, and might even be able to get them free or heavily subsidized native plants/seeds.
posted by rue72 at 1:20 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Xerces Society has a lot of useful resources and books.
posted by Poldo at 1:54 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Alive Structures could be a good resource. They are in Brooklyn.
posted by delight at 9:22 PM on May 9, 2019

Recent discussions about planting for wildlife consider "local" to be very narrow. They recommend finding plants from as close to your garden as possible. So a plant from New England might be the same species but wouldn't be local to Brooklyn. And be aware of the problem of nativars which are native but may have been selected for traits that make them less useful to wildlife. Here is information for Long Island.
When you say "pollution cleaning" do you mean air or soil? There are plants that bioaccumulate metals from polluted soil but then would have to be disposed of and air cleaning plant discussions all seem to be about indoor air. Probably any dense planting would be useful.
posted by Botanizer at 4:41 AM on May 10, 2019

Those Master Naturalist programs are often sponsored by Cooperative Extension, a nationwide public program. For Brooklyn that is apparently this: Cornell University Cooperative Extension NYC. (In addition to being an Ivy, Cornell is also a state school and has a long history of training Cooperative Extension folks.)
posted by mareli at 8:56 AM on May 10, 2019