The Gardiner Library Pollinator Garden

The Gardiner Library Pollinator Garden

by Angela Sisson

In 2020, during the height of Covid, I helped form a local gardening group called the Wallkill Valley Pollinator Pathway. Unfortunately, Covid restrictions prevented us from getting together and having events. Initially I supplemented the lack of outreach activity by offering site visits to interested property owners and talks at outdoor venues. But we still needed projects which could involve the rest of the group.

Then in October 2021, a friend suggested asking the Gardiner Library’s executive director if we could plant a pollinator garden. When I presented our idea to Nicole Lane, she said “I love it!” Nicole and I worked out the details and found a good location for the garden behind the library; an out of the way sloped section of sunny lawn, strategically located within view of and accessible to the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail. The rail trail is popular year-round with walkers, bikers and birders. It seemed like this would be a good way to introduce pollinator friendly, native plant gardens to the community. And it did prove to be a good choice because over the years rail trail visitors have often commented on the flowers and pollinators visiting the garden.

Preparing the Garden

The following month, on November 18, 2021 a group of volunteers prepared the garden. We smothered a 12-foot x 60-foot area with black plastic to kill the lawn. Once the lawn was dead, we could plant directly into the dead turf. (Black plastic kills vegetation by cutting off the light. Sometimes this is confused with solarization, a process also used to kill existing vegetation but which uses clear plastic.)

Over the winter rail trail visitors had become curious about the black plastic stretched over the ground behind the library. I was amused to hear that some people thought this was one of those “library art projects.”

Funding the Garden

The garden-to-be stayed smothered under plastic over that winter until early May 2022. In the meantime, we needed to find the money to pay for plants and materials. Using a crowd-sourcing GoFundMe campaign, we raised $1500 in just two days! Clearly there was community support for this project.

The Benefits of a Pollinator Garden

Donors were encouraged to support a garden which, “…will provide valuable habitat for pollinators in the neighborhood and along the rail trail wildlife corridor. It will also educate library patrons, rail trail visitors, and the community about the importance of pollinator habitat.” And, “Once the plants establish and begin to flower, the pollinator garden will start to attract butterflies and bees, moths and beetles. Over the winter months, the dead leaves and dried plant stalks will be left to provide a home to overwintering pollinators. The winter garden will also attract birds foraging for seeds and insects. Visitors to the library and along the rail trail can enjoy a seasonal display of flowering plants—from the earliest wildflowers of April to the asters of November.”

Planting the Garden

On May 13, 2022 a group of volunteers planted the garden with 500 landscape plugs purchased using the funds donated through GoFundMe. We had some difficulty digging holes in what proved to be a patchwork of dense, gravelly soil but fortunately, the holes only needed to be a few inches deep. This garden-to-be was located over a mound of “fill”. The library building had been sited on an elevated mound created by artificial fill. A few inches of topsoil were spread over the mound to support a lawn. (Lawns are shallow-rooted and don’t require deep soil.) Beneath this thin layer of topsoil, we encountered rocks (some too large to move), areas of dense gravel, and the occasional chunk of block or asphalt. Preparing the area with additional topsoil, something the landscape industry often does, would have been costly. The rule of thumb for ecological landscaping, on the other hand, is to work with the conditions you have, and match the plant to those conditions. Another reason not to add topsoil is that weeds tend to thrive in rich soils whereas many native plant species are able to outcompete weeds in tougher, leaner soils. The exception is when the soil has become compacted, often the result of heavy equipment being driven on wet soils. In these situations, measures should be taken to aerate the soil.  In any case, the soil was not seriously compacted and was not amended.

Plant Species

The garden was initially planted with following 12 species:

Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis); Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa); New England Aster (Aster n-a ‘Purple Dome’); Barren Strawberry (Geum fragarioides); Alumroot (Heuchera longiflora); Blazing Star (Liatris spicata); Golden Groundsel (Packera obovata); Creeping Phlox (Phlox stolonifera ‘Sherwood Purple’); Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium reptans); Broadleaf Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum); Orange Coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida var. fulgida); and Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)

The species were chosen for their value to pollinators and to provide blooming from spring to fall.

Some of the plant species have done very well. Other species did not thrive and have diminished over time. It’s useful to let plants “sort themselves out.” Our job is to provide enough plants and then let nature decide which ones will ultimately be successful in the garden. (Though we do need to control the aggressive plants because nature won’t be able do that for us.)

Butterfly Weed, for example, did very well the first season but has not thrived in the garden. It flowered, set seed and many of the seedlings emerged the following season. Unfortunately, once the plants become a little larger, they tend to die off. Perhaps the deep tap roots of Butterfly Weed eventually run into the fill just below the top soil and can’t get through the dense gravel or other obstructions.

In order to replace those species which haven’t thrived, some new species were added: In 2023 we planted a flat of Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), and a flat of Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata) both of which have become established are are thriving (perhaps too much so in the case of coneflower). In 2024 we planted a flat of Sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa). In 2025 we planted a flat of Aromatic Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium).

Plant labels

We purchased labels for the plants to help visitors identify the species. But the inexpensive plastic labels broke down and became messy – not a good look for a public garden. The plastic labels were removed and replaced with more permanent metal labels.

Maintenance & Watering

Preparing, planting and maintaining a garden over the first season requires a lot of labor and the library found several volunteers to help with the garden that first year. We had a serious drought that year but volunteers were able to keep the garden well-watered and everything survived. Fortunately, the garden had been located next to a spigot because even drought-tolerant plants would need to be watered after the initial planting and as needed during the first season. During the first year the roots are working to get established and cannot be left to the whims of nature. In other words, even if watering turns out to be unnecessary, one should always be prepared to water a new planting.

Now that the garden is established, it no longer needs to be watered. In fact, the garden has not been watered, even during droughts, since its first growing season in 2022. The only exception has been the watering of newly installed plants. New plantings should, of course, always be watered.

Mulching

When the garden was planted in 2022, we used bark mulch to protect the soil from exposure. The plants were densely spaced in order to fill the area by the following year. If planted appropriately, it should not be necessary to mulch a garden after the first season or two. By the second year the ground layer had closed and the plants became the mulch – protecting the soil from exposure – no regular mulch needed. The exception (because there’s always an exception) are the paths and edges where the ground remained exposed. The paths were not only prone to weeds but, because of the slope, there was some erosion as well. In 2024 we added stone mulch (drainage stone) to the pathways and edge areas which protected or covered the soil and halted the erosion. Stone mulch is useful in these circumstances because, unlike bark mulch, it does not decompose and can hold its ground during rainstorms.

If a garden has been designed and maintained using ecological landscaping principles, by the second season the maintenance requirements should fall off dramatically. And that’s exactly what happened. I’ve been visiting the garden on a regular basis since 2021; occasionally pulling weeds, pruning plants, spraying deer repellent and so forth. Oftentimes other volunteers have joined me for weeding. Sometimes there was little to do – other than taking photos. All in all, the effort required to keep the garden happy and healthy, has been minimal.

Volunteers

Volunteers have been involved in all aspects of the garden, from preparation and planting to weeding and watering – and whatever else needed to be done. Looking back, there have been quite a few! Thank you to all the garden volunteers! Thank you to: Doris, Bill, Donna, Laura, Sharon, Tara, Maxine, Jeff, Gail, Leo, Sandra, Elissa, Michael, Carrie, Rich, Barbara, and I’m sure there are others whose names escape me right now.

From Pollinator Pathway to Wild Ones

By 2023 we had transitioned from a small gardening group affiliated with Pollinator Pathway and the Wallkill Valley Land Trust to a local chapter of Wild Ones, a national native plant organization. In 2022 I reached out to Wild Ones and helped form Wild Ones Mid-Hudson Valley which serves Ulster, Orange, Dutchess and Putnam counties. (As of August 2026, the Wild Ones organization had 100 chapters and 49 seedlings in 38 states, with over 14,000 members, almost double what it was when I first contacted Wild Ones in 2022.)

Gardiner Library Native Plant Sale

Shortly after we planted the garden (May 13, 2022), we held the Gardiner Library’s first Native Plant Sale (May 21, 2022). Most of the same species which had just been planted were sold at that sale. (2026 marks the fifth year of the native plant sale.)

Gardiner Library Pollinator Hedge

In 2023, a year after the pollinator garden was planted, the library applied for and received a habitat restoration grant from Partners for Climate Action (now known as The Understory) to plant a pollinator hedge – a companion planting to the pollinator garden. The grant covered the cost of plants and the hedge was planted by volunteers in September 2024.

But those are stories for another time.

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Pollinator Garden Through The Years

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