5 ways to help your local ecosystem in early spring

Seasonally-timed, ecological gardening advice for the Outer Piedmont of the Southeast

Early spring is a sweet, fleeting time that sits between winter dormancy and the growing season’s explosion of green. Before our canopy leafs out, we get ephemerals, perennials that bloom early, feeding hungry, emerging insects, and die back as temperatures rise and shade on the forest floor increases. There’s camo-colored trillium leaves sporting burgundy, pink, white, and yellow flowers, prehistoric-looking trout lily, whimsical rue anemone, delicate spring beauty, and cheerful bloodroot, whose flowering season is short but incredible foliage season is long. Spring also brings pollen, and every year, there’s some inaccurate or misleading information that circulates about it. Stay tuned for my upcoming newsletter on plant sex that will try to clear things up.

For the garden list this time of year, we’ve got some work to do and some conventional tasks to let go of or avoid. These will make a positive impact, especially for our biodiverse, non-human neighbors. But, as usual, I’d like to remind you that they’re no substitute for the kind of community and coalition-building we need in order to make meaningful change. We just can’t tip the increasingly terrible scales of destruction by acting alone. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed and don’t know how you can help beyond your yard, I wrote a section in my last newsletter for you. Whoever you are, you have so many special gifts that you can give to building a better world, at home and beyond.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Rethink spring garden clean up • Cut back dead flower stems for bees • Divide and transplant late-blooming perennials • Turn off outdoor lights at night for birds • Stay ahead of mosquito season

Rethink spring garden clean up

Traditional spring clean up in the garden involves raking/blowing and bagging leaves leftover from fall and getting rid of fallen branches, twigs, and the like. Ecological gardening asks the opposite of you, which is, thankfully, much easier. Leaves actually harbor butterfly chrysalises and beetle larvae, including fireflies, along with other species, and caterpillars and grubs are the main food source for most baby birds. Raking and blowing at this point can harm the next generation of insects and the animals who depend on them. Since most moths and butterflies pupate on the ground, but are vulnerable to being hurt by foot traffic, it's mutually beneficial to have clear pathways and play spaces and less-trodden garden beds. 

Rather than sending off woody garden debris, an intentional brush pile will shelter beneficial insects, like lacewings, hoverflies, and parasitoid wasps, who are very cool-looking and not-actually-scary natural predators of nuisances like aphids. These, too, are still nesting and can be harmed by disturbance. If you don’t have a brush pile yet, pick a spot away from structures and get one started.

Cut back dead flower stems for bees

Leaving flower heads up over the fall feeds birds and other animals, and it reseeds your garden naturally. Cutting these stalks back to 8-24 inches in early spring can create native bee habitat. 30% of our native bee species are cavity nesters, meaning they need hollow stems, dead wood, or brush piles in order to live. Many of our flowers have hollow stems, like sunflowers, Joe Pye weed, cup plant, even narrow bee balm stems, plus elderberry and sumac shrubs. You can use the clipped, hollow stems to create your own bee hotel (here are some more good plants for that). Or just leave them on the ground where you clip them, or where you want the seeds to germinate, or in a brush pile.

Bees will find the stem openings and lay eggs inside, along with balls of pollen. Keep an eye out for stems plugged with leaves, grass, dirt, and other natural materials—this signals a nest, though open stems can still be nests, too. When the eggs hatch, larvae feed on the pollen, develop, then hibernate in the stems over the winter before they fly out the following spring. Thus, it’s best to leave the cut stems alone and let them fall and decompose naturally. While the stems will be somewhat camouflaged with this season's growth, if you can’t hang with everything looking this wild, try a more naturalistic section within the garden or selectively clip hollow stem species and cut the rest back in a tidier way.

If you’re lucky enough to see this bee nesting activity, consider participating in these community science initiatives: Bumble Bee Watch for bumble bee nesting and the Xerces Society’s nesting plants for bees database for other bees.

Divide and transplant late-blooming perennials

Early spring is the ideal time to divide and move perennials that flower in late summer and fall. This includes goldenrods, asters, Joe Pye weed, grasses (like pink muhly, little bluestem, purple lovegrass), turtleheads, sunflowers, hibiscus, liatris, ironweeds, and more. Be sure to water twice a week for the first month following transplanting.

The inverse of this means that fall is the ideal time to do the same for spring and early summer bloomers, so wait for the right time for the right species. Sharing plants with friends and neighbors is a great way to build community.

Turn off outdoor lights at night for birds

Spring migration season for birds flying through Georgia started on March 15th and will peak in late spring. (You can track it here.) Most migrating birds travel routine paths at night. Outdoor lights, or more broadly, skyglow from urban areas, will attract birds and disorient them off their impressively long journeys, while increasing the chances that they’ll collide with buildings. It’s a lot of disruption for an already demanding trip. Even outside of bird migration season, artificial light at night decreases plant pollination, disturbs vital plant circadian rhythms, and damages insect populations, like fireflies and other beetles, bees, and moths. I’m not saying we have to live in darkness, but lighting needs to be intentional. Have parties and visible pathways but don’t leave lights on by default. Our world depends on darkness.

Aside from turning lights off, you can try these:

• install motion sensors for lighting at exterior entrances 

• set up timers

• use the dimmest lights/settings possible

• direct light at walkways and structures (not up toward the sky or at plants)

• install red light bulbs or filters – studies show red spectrum lights interfere less with insect life than blue spectrum light

Stay ahead of mosquito season

Mosquito season starts when temperatures stay consistently above 50°F. Thanks to climate change, that season is getting longer for everyone in the U.S. except the southwest (where it’s only shorter because the intolerably hot season is now longer). It’s bad news on bad news, I know. But please don’t let this awful aspect of nature lead you to disproportionately awful destruction. The chemicals used in mosquito fogging and spray treatments, even those marketed as “natural,” indiscriminately kill almost all insects in the spray area, including pollinators, monarch butterflies, fireflies, even some earthworms, not just in the sprayed yard, but in neighboring yards that experience drift. There’s less information regarding toxicity for caterpillars who eat sprayed leaves, but residue will remain on foliage for up to 3 weeks. All of this impacts animals, like birds, who depend on these insects as a food source.

Try better, preventative measures instead:

• Make a habit of checking your landscape for standing water: flower pots, old tires, toys, beer cans, you get the idea. It only takes an inch of water and 8-10 days for mosquito larvae to hatch. If you have a bird bath or other basin, rinse it weekly, add in a mosquito dunk every month, or add a pump. The bacteria in the dunk should not impact birds, amphibians, or most other insects, including dragonflies.

• Attract mosquito nesting and targeting the larvae. Basically, you fill a bucket with some leaves, twigs, brushy stuff, and fill with water. Either cover it with chicken wire (something to keep critters, but not mosquitos, out) or put a big stick in there (to give critters who fall in an exit). Keep it somewhere shady and out of sight, let it sit for a week, and add a mosquito dunk. This stops larvae from growing into adults. Add a new dunk every month or start over if it gets gross. Look into the mosquito bucket challenge to learn more.

• Attract mosquito predators: dragonflies, bats, purple martins, swallows. You will have an easier time bringing these in if you have some kind of water basin onsite (that you regularly rinse or treat for mosquitos). Look up what they like to eat and nest in and go for it.

• Consider a community approach. If your neighbors are taking these preventative measures, your entire neighborhood will be better off and much more enjoyable. The Xerces Society has this handy community toolkit to get you started.

This newsletter is a passion project where I share ecologically-inclusive land care practices with hope for a collective, positive impact that helps our biodiverse neighbors and shares the beauty of this incredible place we get to call home. If you’d like to support my work, hire or refer me for a consult or design work, and please share this newsletter.

Thank you for reading,

Alex Lampert

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