We’re fortunate to live in a village that understands the importance of pollinator plants to the environment. The Adopt-A-Spot program, started by TEAC and the Village of Tarrytown this year, gave me and other local gardeners the opportunity to plant a garden in select areas around town. I chose the traffic island triangle at the intersection of McKeel, Neperan and Warren Avenue. 

For a pollinator-friendly garden without the endless fussing, I set some rules. Plants would be:

• drought-tolerant (since there’s no water source on the island)

• attractive to bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators

• unappealing to deer

• low maintenance, once established

• easy to spread through division, seeds or cuttings

• native, or a “nativar”, and a non-invasive

• good pollen producers

• proven to survive and thrive in my own home garden

In our Northeast gardens, plenty of plants fit those criteria; planning was more about what to exclude, rather than what to add. 

The Plan

The garden curves around a central grass path between two large sugar maples and is anchored at the triangle’s three corners with flower beds of perennials and annuals, natives and ‘nativars’. Everything is a powerhouse of pollination.

Is it true that red flowers attract bees and butterflies? I don’t know, but it’s a color that stays vibrant in the sun’s summer glare, when other colors look washed out. So, shades of red and pink dominate and unify the garden beds, and the hummingbirds love it. 

Salvias and agastaches, with endless variety in color and size, are backbone plants that will bloom for months on end.  Other reliable, low-maintenance perennials include purple coneflowers, bee balm, spiky liatris. Mail-ordered packages of zinnias, cosmos and dahlias were all I needed to fill out the rest of the beds and provide seeds for years to come.

Planting, and Planting…

Most everything in the garden began growing from seed in my basement. Six types of seed-grown agastaches grow in the garden: the giant anise hyssop, diminutive hybrids “Raspberry Daiquiri”, “Rose Mint”, “Heather Queen”, feathery “Apache Sunset”, and my favorite: showy “Royal Raspberry”, with its purple leaves and pink flowers.

Salvias draw hummingbirds, bees and goldfinches; the garden has three varieties to choose from: ‘Black and Blue’ (their favorite!), a magenta Salvia ‘Amante’, and plenty of red Texas sage, a standout and bee favorite.

To fill out the beds as the perennials grow in, I’ve added tough-as-nails, fast-growing, seed-grown colorful zinnias: Barbie-doll pink ‘Exquisite’, low-growing and bushy ‘Zahara Raspberry Ripple’, red ‘Mazurkia’ and ‘Zinderella Fizz’. The open disk florets of dahlias and cosmos welcome pollinators of all kinds.  Swamp milkweed, beautiful and dependable, pairs well with the purple flowers of vitex; its foliage feeds monarch butterfly caterpillars.

And there are some surprises: two American Beautyberry bushes that will yield lurid magenta berries on their stems in the fall, just as the sugar maples and geraniums start to turn brilliant red. Three cold-hardy passionfruit vines (also grown from seed) twine up a metal sign supports; maybe they’ll fruit before winter sets in. And, to add a touch of black to a mostly-red garden, I’ve planted small patches of the spicy capsicum, ‘Black Pearl’, a blazing-hot pepper that’s great for adding heat to cooked dishes.

Challenges, and Next Year

Gardening in a plot without irrigation is a challenge in our 90-degree summers, but the area under the two sugar maple trees is especially difficult. Their shallow root systems suck up every drop of moisture from the soil, turning it to dust. I’m trying a native groundcover cranesbill -- Geranium macrorhizum ‘Bevan’s Variety’ – that can grow just about anywhere in my home garden. The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract a native bee called a Cranesbill Miner, thought to rely only on this plant.

For next year, some improvements are needed! There’s still a large garden bed to fill in. For visual structure, I’ll plant dwarf inkberry holly, a northeast native, instead of boxwood. And I’ll keep experimenting with plantings under the thirsty, shady maple trees, to see what survives. I’d love to add a birdbath to the lovely green bench – a donation from Rachel Tieger -- and maybe a “Little Seed Library” to exchange seeds with neighbors.

If you’d like to grow any of the plants in the triangle garden, help yourself to the seeds of spent and dried blooms. The zinnias, cosmos, coneflower and salvias are especially easy to grow. You can store the seeds for next spring.