Look Who Visited My Garden!

Brie's Pollinator Garden

Here's another quick update on my garden. More plants have started to blossom and there are a lot of bees coming to visit! There is definetly more bees then butterflies, but the garden is still being pollinated! Here's some pictures:

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Update

Here's just a quick update from my garden! I went to water my garden today and there were many bees on the flowers! This made me really happy! The flowers look really good and are very colorful. That's all for today!

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Small Update

Hello everyone! Just wanted to give you a small update on the garden. The plants have gotten very big and healthy. Lots of the plants have bloomed and have flowers on the. While watering the garden a few days ago, we spotted four butterflies! This is a great sign that pollinators are starting to come to the garden!

Brie"s Pollinator Garden: Flowers Are Blooming!

                           Here's  a quick update on my garden. Some plants are starting to bloom, and all the plants look very healthy!

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Planting Day!

Welcome back to my blog! Last week, I had the planting for my garden held! It was really fun and I am very happy with the finished product! Today I'm just going to talk about what we did to plant the garden step by step.

                 Since my garden was in a swale, the first thing to do was to clear out the swale of grass and leaves. This took the longest to do, since we not only had to get out the grass in the swale, we also had to make sure the soil was smoothed out and we had to get out any roots and sometimes rocks!

                             The next thing we did was put up the deer fence. The poles for the deer fence were already put up beforehand, which saved us a lot of time. In order to connect the fence to the poles, we used something called zip ties, which helped connect the fence and the pole together . We kept one side of the fence open, so we could go in and out while planting the flowers. We also set up and extra pole where we created a sort of gate that can help us get in without having to take down the entire fence!

                                        The third thing we did was plant the flowers. Before planting, we set up flags at each foot of the garden, since there would be a certain amount of plants per foot. We spray painted by each flag to create a grid of areas to plant. Every volunteer who participated got to plant a foot of the garden so everyone had a chance to plant.

                                The final thing we did was water the garden so the plants have some water to start growing and getting bigger. Watering also took a lot of time because we didn't want one plant to get more water then the other, and we ended up going over the garden about twice.

                        I hope you enjoyed this blog post! Even though planting is over, I will occasionally write a blog post to keep you updated on the garden!

The finished garden!

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Getting Ready!

Welcome back to my blog! Sorry I haven't posted in so long. But the day for building my garden is only a day away and I got some of my plants for the garden. Today I'm going to talk about some of the preparations for my garden.

                             Some of my plants the I received are at my home, and others are at my local parks department where they are keeping it in storage. I also have some deer fence and other deer fence supplies at my home. I was actually able to get some of my deer fence supplies and my plants donated, which was very helpful for me! I have 7.5 ft x 100 ft fence, since my garden is a 10 ft x 20 ft garden.

                            When I received my plants, I made a small diagram of my garden, so I know where I want each plant to go and how any "plugs" will but there. I separated each type of plant by if it was a dry plant, and wet plant, or a plant for both. Since I'm putting my garden in swale, some of the plants will be in the swale itself and others will be outside of the swale.

                          Hope you enjoyed this post, and I will hopefully have a blog post up about how the planting of the garden went!

Some of the plants for my garden!

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Which Are the Right Plants?

                        Welcome back to my blog! Last time, I talked about how I was going to find the right plants for my garden and which types I specifically needed for the garden. Today, I want to talk about some of the plants I chose for my garden and why.

                        It was a very tedious process when picking the plants because they had to either be good for wet, dry, or wet/dry soil and native to where the garden is being planted. One of the plants in my garden is the purple coneflower. I chose this plant because it's a dry plant, which means the plant is good in areas with dry soil, which part of my garden is dry soil. This was also one of my plants of choice because it is native to the location of my garden. I considered most of these things while considering plants to put in my garden.

                        I hope you enjoyed this blog, and make sure to stay tuned for my next post!
                         

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Adding Flowers and How to Find Them

                                     Welcome back everyone! Hope you've enjoyed these last blog posts! Today I'm going to talk about the types of flowers I'll be putting in my garden and how I found the right ones. Let's get started!

                                   If you didn't read my last blog post (which you should totally check out) I mentioned that I am putting my garden in a swale. Since this type of area is on different levels, the type of soil is slightly different. When I was researching types of plants, I looked for three types, plants adapted to wet soil, plants adapted to dry soil, and plants that can adapt to both wet and dry soils. I decided to sort of divide my garden up into three sections for the the three types of soil. I divided my garden up even more so I know how many plants I wanted.

                                  I was able to get all my plants donated by two plant nurseries: Pinelands Nursery and New Moon Nursery. I got a total of 200 plants from both nurseries (not 200 plants from each nursery).

                                   Hope you enjoyed this blog post! See you next time!

Brie's Pollinator Garden: Getting The Area Prepared

                                      Welcome back to my blog! Today I am going to talk about where I am going to put my garden and the process of figuring out the perfect place to put it.

                                

                                    I decided to put my garden in my local park so many people would be able to view it while passing by. My garden is going to be in an unusual spot...a swale! I am putting my garden in a swale in the park because it is easier for water to reach the plants in the garden and getting closer to the roots. Before I could officially say that this is where I want my garden to be, I had to make sure the soil was good for planting. I went to the swale with my mom and we started digging small holes in the swale. We would put the dirt into a bucket and combined them later. After collecting the soil, we brought the soil to a lab where they would test the soil. After about a week, we got the results back, saying that it was okay to plant there! 

                                    I hope you enjoyed this post and got to learn about this process before you can even plan anything! Make sure to stay tuned for my next post!

The soil that was tested

The swale where my garden will be

Welcome to My Blog!

                                    Welcome to My Blog!

                                    Hello everybody! My name is Brie, and this is my brand new blog! I decided to make this blog to share my journey of making a pollinator garden. I am making this garden for my Girl Scout Silver Award, which is the second highest award a Girl Scout can earn. The point of the Silver Award and Girl Scout Awards in general is for girls to help make their community a better place. I decided to make a pollinator garden for my Silver Award because I have heard about the decrease in the butterfly population, and creating a garden would help attract butterflies and help them reproduce to increase their population. 

                                   I will be adding to my blog as my project keeps progressing and I get closer to planting my garden! Make sure to stay tuned for my next post!