Pollinator Palooza!

Happy pollinator week! Celebrate and learn about our pollinators and their importance at Slide Ranch and our overall ecosystem. Without pollinators, we would be without the abundant plant and flower life that makes Slide Ranch and the world a beautiful place. Not only that, but without pollinators we would lose many of the plant based foods we eat every day!

If you take a walk in our garden now, you may look around and see lots of thriving flowers and full beds of fruits and vegetables. If you look a little closer, you may see dozens of honeybees from our resident hives, all sorts of native bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies throughout our garden. They are all hard at work pollinating plants and helping our garden thrive.

While honeybees may get the most recognition as an important pollinator here at Slide Ranch, there are many important pollinators we should remember! Native bees can be found all over the ranch, both out on the trails and in our garden. Their role in pollination is just as important as our honeybees. They look a little (or a lot!) different from honeybees, and may even look more like a fly than a bee. They may be super tiny, or really big like a bumble bee! Most of our native bees are solitary and rely on leaf litter or hollowed out dried stems of plants like fennel that have a soft, spongy interior. If you would like to help provide a home for these crucial pollinators, leaving fallen leaves and sticks in your yard is hugely beneficial!

While bees get the most attention as pollinators, birds, butterflies, moths, bats, beetles, the wind and even us humans are all pollinators! Almost anything can be a pollinator – even your pet dogs and cats!

As you go about your week, continue to think about the impact and importance of all the different pollinators around you and if there are any steps you can take to help them thrive.

Thank you pollinators!