Beautiful native pollinator garden

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]Hey, it's Gary with today for tomorrow and I'm here in Boca Raton, Florida in the Susan Laucher Community Garden and today I'm going to take you on a tour of our native pollinator habitat section of the garden. This is something we've worked as a community on. We're really proud of it. Uh it's probably around, I don't know, maybe 2,000 square feet and it's full of natives and it's also full of non-invasive beautiful uh pollinator plants. So, I'm going to take you on a tour. Really excited. Show you all the cool stuff in here. Are you ready? Let's go.

[00:00:34]All right, here's the entrance. Uh the story to this pollinator habitat is basically uh these 4 by 4 plots once upon a time they were leased out to the gardeners, but nobody really wanted them because they were too small for food production.

[00:00:49]So, what happened was way over there on the outside of the fence we had uh planted some pollinator plants.

[00:00:59]Now, the trouble with planting the pollinator plants outside the fence was iguanas. It took about 1 week for the iguanas to decimate pretty much everything that was planted.

[00:01:09]So, fortunately we were able to bring a lot of those plants back in here uh where we have protection from the iguanas and they've been able to thrive.

[00:01:18]The reason for that, as you can see, is the sheet metal. Uh it's probably about 3 ft tall that goes around the entire garden and the iguanas just cannot climb it.

[00:01:28]So, it's pretty effective.

[00:01:31]Anyhow the garden is comprised now of a lot of uh the original natives which are more like trees, such as cuz that's all that survived the iguanas, such as this necklace pod here.

[00:01:44]Uh and then some Marlberry trees, like we have down here.

[00:01:52]A really cool here, you'll see a loggerhead shrike up on top of this trellis that will eventually be covered with a native coral honeysuckle.

[00:02:00]And that shrike is so cool because it's kind of a family of them. It's actually you can watch he's hunting right now.

[00:02:10]Where'd you go, buddy?

[00:02:12]There he goes.

[00:02:13]So cool, you can watch them all day long just hunting in this garden.

[00:02:18]As we come through here, you're going to see natives and non-natives. You're going to see all kinds of butterflies. I don't know the names of all of them, but I mean look right right in the beginning, we're seeing them.

[00:02:28]Buckeye maybe that one is, I don't know.

[00:02:31]Um but native tickseed, that's our native uh state wildflower.

[00:02:37]And blanket flower, which is debatedly native. It's been here since the 1500s.

[00:02:43]Of course, there goes a monarch.

[00:02:44]Oh, there's that fritillary. That's a gulf fritillary.

[00:02:47]Right there.

[00:02:48]On a ramgoat dashy dashalong. Kind of a funny name.

[00:02:52]Native paradise tree.

[00:02:54]Native salvias with some non-native cosmos there.

[00:02:58]Non-native uh giant milkweed, but preferable to the tropical milkweed, I'm told. And you can see it's for the monarchs. There's one flying probably laying eggs on it right as we speak.

[00:03:13]Non-native, but incredible plant. This is a sweet almond. It's always a hub of activity with all the bees and small pollinators.

[00:03:21]Looks like the monarch liked it, too.

[00:03:26]More of the blanket flower there. Woolly tea bush, which is a serious favorite for bees. Um and then a salvia poking up behind it.

[00:03:34]Railroad vine here. Climbing asters down there, natives.

[00:03:39]Oh, here's a native white indigo berry.

[00:03:40]This is one of the ones from outside.

[00:03:44]And then rice button asters around it.

[00:03:47]Coneflowers behind that.

[00:03:51]And a lot of these just kind of some natives, some non-natives worked in here. Non-native salvia.

[00:03:57]Native juvenile goldenrod there.

[00:04:00]I kind of set it up like a maze so people can just enjoy walking around through here.

[00:04:05]Here's a flower, late flower on this necklace pod.

[00:04:08]Hummingbirds like that.

[00:04:10]Um and of course pollinators and this is why it's called necklace pod.

[00:04:13]Necklace cot pod bean right there.

[00:04:18]Ooh, yellow top, beautiful native here.

[00:04:21]Um silver sunflower.

[00:04:25]Native firebush.

[00:04:27]Coming through here to privet senna or that is a native senna. Um there's a lot that aren't and that's the host plant and a nectar plant, too, for the uh sulfur butterfly.

[00:04:39]Seaside ageratum, if I'm saying that right, another native, the purple one down there.

[00:04:44]Bloodberry, that's an extirpated plant.

[00:04:47]Uh meaning just fancy name for you can't find it in the wild anymore, or just developers have basically bulldozed over all the land, the habitat's gone.

[00:04:56]But this is a really important pollinator plant.

[00:04:59]Here's a much nicer, healthier one here.

[00:05:02]That's the name, bloodberry, right?

[00:05:04]Um and when it does flower, you'll see a housefly on there now, but which is a pollinator, believe it not. We found that's an interesting story, I'll tell you later.

[00:05:15]But uh yeah, that's a that's a really important native.

[00:05:21]Ooh, speaking of natives, um among the native plants here, this is a native um lantana which is something you see everywhere here in butterfly gardens, but usually not the native. Oh, there goes the cloudless sulfur.

[00:05:35]See if you can see it flying there.

[00:05:40]Yeah, lantanas are in everybody's butterfly gardens, but not necessarily the natives.

[00:05:50]Moving through here, you can just see the monarchs all over the milkweed.

[00:05:54]Speaking of milkweed, let's talk about native milkweeds.

[00:05:57]Here's one here.

[00:05:59]That is a swamp milkweed, I believe. And we have a few native milkweeds in here, but they're all defoliated by the caterpillars.

[00:06:09]Goldenrod, another beautiful native. You can see the fritillary there.

[00:06:13]Butterfly, see it?

[00:06:15]Oh, that's not a fritillary. That might be a little Julia. I don't know what that is.

[00:06:18]Um goldenrod's a beautiful beautiful flower.

[00:06:23]Native. And of course, a lot of these natives will do the same thing. They'll see those are all baby goldenrods.

[00:06:29]Non-native invasive vinca. We're We're doing our best to pull those out. I'll get those out after the video.

[00:06:35]Pretty, but they don't belong here.

[00:06:38]Oh, there's a gulf fritillary.

[00:06:41]These guys are everywhere and one of the reasons for that is because we planted corky-stem passionvine.

[00:06:52]Oh, there's the monarchs.

[00:06:57]Been seeing, of course, lots of monarchs, lots of fritillaries um some Julias, zebras, swallowtails, and sulfurs in here and tons of little little butterflies.

[00:07:11]More of this beautiful salvia.

[00:07:16]More firebush.

[00:07:20]And then, of course, we have where you can see the scorpion fly. That's a type of dragonfly on this coontie which is a great success story here.

[00:07:28]Look, little scorpion tail right here.

[00:07:33]That's a really fun thing to do. If you just watch just watch you know anywhere here in this garden.

[00:07:39]This blanket flower is right now a perfect example.

[00:07:42]Florida has over 300 species of native bees.

[00:07:47]None of which are the humming you know, the honeybee we all know, that's European. But here's one here.

[00:07:52]And they're all different shapes and sizes. Some look like bees. There's three or four different species of native bees right now in here right when we're looking.

[00:08:02]And some are tiny and look like flies.

[00:08:04]Some are bigger and look like bees.

[00:08:06]Some are huge and look like bumblebees.

[00:08:08]They are bumblebees, in fact.

[00:08:11]But yeah.

[00:08:13]So cool to just kind of zoom in and watch one of these areas closely.

[00:08:22]Of course, the porterweed, which I've discovered this is not a native. So, we have a bit of a challenge here to maybe replace it with a native.

[00:08:32]Interesting native here called the snowy squarestem.

[00:08:37]Flowers look snowy and the stem, I don't know if you can see it, but you can definitely feel it is totally square.

[00:08:44]Now, we have some of the native milkweed.

[00:08:47]Um here's beautyberry here.

[00:08:53]And then some of the native milkweeds right here.

[00:08:58]Um and then right behind it there, I believe that might be the tropical milkweed which is a discussion in of itself.

[00:09:07]Okay, let's talk about the tropical milkweeds for a second. The whole milkweed uh controversy or conundrum, whatever you want to call it, here in well, not just in Florida, kind of everywhere.

[00:09:17]Um so, there's a parasite. I can't remember the Latin name for it, but basically OE is the abbreviated form.

[00:09:24]And it's a naturally occurring parasite that uh I guess the host plant would be milkweeds because it's host animal is the monarch.

[00:09:34]Uh and then there's a lot of controversy around the tropical milkweed and I have some here to show you.

[00:09:44]We're trying to get this out of the garden and that's not a real good shot of it because you can't see any actual flowers.

[00:09:51]But um it is a commercially available milkweed that you'll see in all the big box stores.

[00:09:58]And that's precisely because it does flower so well and it is so hardy.

[00:10:02]Now, the controversy around it is basically that with everybody growing this tropical milkweed um we're creating essentially a food I guess it'd be like almost like a smorgasbord for monarchs uh where they normally wouldn't be. So, the the native milkweeds like the ones I showed you earlier they go dormant in the wintertime.

[00:10:27]So, migratory monarchs would just kind of continue on down to Mexico um where curiously enough that's where the tropical milkweed is from.

[00:10:37]Um but they would continue on down there.

[00:10:40]The theory being that if you plant the tropical milkweed uh that does not go dormant in the winter, they're going to stop and they're not going to continue their migration cuz why do they need to?

[00:10:51]They've got uh plenty to eat uh wherever you planted it.

[00:10:55]Now, the thing is down here in South Florida we don't really get the migratory species.

[00:11:00]Um same species but it doesn't migrate.

[00:11:02]It just kind of stays down here cuz it doesn't need to leave. We don't have the frosts.

[00:11:07]But however that said um a little further up the state we do. And so, if you're planting the tropical milkweeds and you're letting those monarchs uh have their eggs on your tropical milkweeds and then a frost comes, you're killing all of those monarchs.

[00:11:24]Uh another I would say a little bit more debatable theory is that the tropical milkweeds are creating uh kind of a disease vector for this OE parasite. I'm not really on board with that. I'm not a lepidopterist but I can tell you it's a naturally occurring parasite and it's going to be on any plant on any milkweed and the monarchs are traveling so they're moving it around. So, I don't really buy into that.

[00:11:54]Uh however I can tell you this, it is an invasive plant. We've watched it uh just spread like crazy in this garden.

[00:12:02]So, for that reason alone I would steer you away from the tropical milkweed. Try to find native milkweeds. Anytime you can try to find native plants and plant them.

[00:12:12]Look, wanted to show you another butterfly here.

[00:12:16]This is skipper. Whoop. Hope you caught that.

[00:12:20]Um we just have tons of different butterflies in here. I don't know them all.

[00:12:26]Um as we go on down here just going to pop out of the pollinator garden because we do have an extension here with a bunch of uh coonties and snowberries and this is where we see our atala butterflies.

[00:12:43]Just going to see if there was a uh little bunch of them here.

[00:12:50]We just had a big crop of caterpillars.

[00:12:53]Nothing right now.

[00:12:57]And that's a comment I wanted to make.

[00:12:58]It's important. A lot of people think of butterflies as pollinators.

[00:13:01]They really are not the best pollinators. Um they kind of just land on their dainty feet, stick their proboscis in um get their nectar and move on.

[00:13:10]Whereas something like a moth is covered in fur might burrow in there inadvertently get some pollen and be a better pollinator.

[00:13:20]And then certainly of course the bees that crawl right in there. They don't have that proboscis.

[00:13:24]Our great pollinators and even flies.

[00:13:26]Um I'll show you the food forest in another video and the avocado trees were um flowering about a month ago covered with hundreds and hundreds of houseflies. Ordinary houseflies. I never knew that. That's a pollinator.

[00:13:42]So, we have more natives out here.

[00:13:44]Here's a beautiful woolly tea bush.

[00:13:46]Again, I mean just you cannot ever pass a woolly tea bush without seeing a ton of bees doing their thing on it.

[00:13:57]We've got all natives out here.

[00:13:59]Here's a little sea grape tree.

[00:14:03]And then white indigo berry Bahama strongbark this tall thin one and we have different stoppers. That's a marlberry back there.

[00:14:13]I think that's a white stopper. We've got a red stopper in the back.

[00:14:17]Simpson stopper more uh Bahama strongbark there.

[00:14:24]So, just a little kind of native mini hardwood hammock we're planting here.

[00:14:31]And that's what it's all about is habitat.

[00:14:33]Natives and habitat.

[00:14:35]Big old neem trees, that's not a native I don't believe.

[00:14:41]I just wanted to show you the outside of the garden.

[00:14:44]See some of our native vines coming across the fence down there.

[00:14:47]Coral honeysuckles.

[00:14:49]Um what else do we have there?

[00:14:52]Sky blue passion vine uh climbing aster little aster flowers still on this one here.

[00:15:00]They're more of a winter flower.

[00:15:03]Just wanted to show you one of these flowers.

[00:15:08]Kind of past its prime.

[00:15:11]But uh and we've got the corky stem here which totally defoliated by the fritillary caterpillars. Just hundreds and hundreds of the fritillaries. But you can see we're down here next to a canal and this is iguana paradise.

[00:15:26]Uh we usually have dozens and dozens. A big cold front knocked them back a bit but that's why the pollinator garden, butterfly garden, whatever it was once upon a time did not survive out here.

[00:15:38]But thanks to this sheet metal it did survive inside.

[00:15:44]This is just outside our garden here where we keep our mulch piles. But I wanted to show you something really really important and that is ground cover. A lot of times people don't think about that.

[00:15:53]But this is a wonderful native ground cover called fogfruit or frogfruit or turkey trot or something like that, turkey tangle. It's got a bunch of names.

[00:16:02]But again, look at the little baby bees everywhere here, the little native bees and some honeybees as well.

[00:16:08]Um but these little matchstick flowers here are just you know, just serious attractors for um the smaller pollinators.

[00:16:21]Sometimes you'll come out here and you'll see our little peacock butterfly which is about and it's about that big. Little white butterfly and they are just everywhere on this.

[00:16:32]Another big field of it here.

[00:16:34]Look at that.

[00:16:37]So, we've let our entire pathways in our um garden become to the extent that we can this frogfruit or frogfruit. Oh, here look at this cool little skipper whatever that little butterfly is. I don't know if you can see him.

[00:16:54]But that's the thing, these small flowers attract the small pollinators.

[00:16:59]Look at they're everywhere.

[00:17:02]Just everywhere.

[00:17:06]Well, I hope you enjoyed our tour of the Susan Wohlfahrt Community Gardens native pollinator habitat. Uh I really wanted to stress that doing something like this in your own yard is a wonderful way to help the planet. Uh pollinators really need our help. They're basically under threat worldwide due to habitat loss and also pesticide use. So, if you can plant some native plants for the pollinators in your area and if you're spraying pesticides, if you could stop, that'd be fantastic. Remember it's the little things we do in our daily lives today that have such a huge impact on all of our tomorrows. Thanks for watching.