- Everyone who watches our show knows how  much I love plants, flowers, butterflies, and pollinators.

Our friend, Tracy Hansen,  was telling me about this huge planting project being started in her town.

Well, I  was all ears and wanted to find out more.

I'm Mary Holm, host of "Prairie Yard  and Garden," and let's all go to Dawson, Minnesota to find out about the details of  what this pollinator project is all about.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and  Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the  Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company.

We have your best interest at heart.

Mark and Margaret Yeakel Jolene in honor of  Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near  Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden," a community of supporters like  you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie  Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

- During the many years I worked at the Native  Plant Nursery, it was my pleasure to meet lots of homeowners as well as professionals that were  doing native plantings for pollinators.

One of the people I visited with via email and phone  was Rhyan Schicker.

Well, it was so exciting to me to find out that we would finally get to  meet in person, as she is in charge of doing the big plantings in Dawson.

Thanks so much, Rhyan,  for letting us come to learn about your project.

- Thanks so much for having me.

I'm so  excited to talk about native plants with you.

- What is your background?

- Yeah, my background is I have been  a district manager at Lac Qui Parle Soil and Water for a little over two years now.

Before that, I was a technician for about five, have been working in the environmental  field for about 10 years or so.

- What is the work that you do now?

- I wear a lot of hats.

We do a lot  of conservation planning with local farmers.

We work with residents on  invasive species removal.

We do a lot of plantings of native plants.

After the  past few years, that's become a lot more popular.

And then a lot of different types of  environmental education throughout the county.

- How did you get started  with planting for pollinators?

- Oh, man.

I think some of it started as a  personal hobby, and then the Lawns to Legumes program that is a State of Minnesota program  for residents to install pollinator habitats at their own homes kind of kicked that off.

We  had a lot of residents who participated in the program and they needed some guidance.

So,  I signed up to be a coach and that kind of started getting me into working with residents  on designing plantings for native plants.

- So, now what is the Pollinator Pathways Project?

- Yeah, the Pollinator Pathways Project is kind  of a larger-scale version of the Lawns to Legumes.

Lawns to Legumes is just for one resident to apply  and they can be reimbursed up to a certain amount for their property, where Pollinator Pathways  kind of encompasses an entire community, so that way we can work on private property as  well as city-owned property so that everybody kind of has an opportunity to enjoy these plantings,  whether they have their own space or not.

So, we kind of came up with a bunch of projects that  we had and then bundled them all into one package and applied for it for the City of Dawson.

It works very similar to Lawns to Legumes, but it's more of like a parent program to  it, like a larger encompassing project.

- Then, how does a community get  started in doing a project like this?

- Yeah, so we had a kickoff event where we invited  residents to come in and learn about the project and what they could do to take part in it, talked  to them about different parts of their yard, you know, what the plantings include.

You can do seeds, you can do live plugs, you can do pollinator-beneficial trees and shrubs.

So, we would get a little bit of information from them.

And then I've been doing a lot of house  visits kind of going over and walking around with residents to see, like, this would be a  good area, this area might not be the best, kind of pairing what they're looking  for with what the program can offer.

- [Mary] How do you select  the sites that you work on?

- [Rhyan] So, some of the sites that are  public property, we found areas that maybe the city doesn't wanna mow anymore that would  be nice to kind of put native plants there and provide some interest as well as stop having  to maintain so often.

Other sites are parks, places where people already are going so that we  can just add a little extra beauty.

Areas along the river are great corridors for pollinators.

So, we tried to pick a couple of those as well.

And then also just residents or organizations  coming to our office and kind of saying, do you have a program for something like this?

So, it's been a little bit of both having the public come to us that's interested and a bit  of choosing locations we really wanted to put some pollinator plantings together.

We are trying  to pull in as much the public as possible to help with the plantings, in hopes that they'll be a  community that wants to help maintain these past the grant period.

The grant kind of requires that  planting stay in place for five years.

Of course, we'd like to see it go much beyond that.

So, our  hopes that are through educating and pulling in the community to feel like they're really a part  of this, we'll kind of build a movement where people are appreciating the plants and wanting  to keep planting more of them in the future.

- Now, what plants do you use for the plantings?

- Each site has a different composition of  plantings.

One of the things we wanna do with this is just really increase the diversity of native  plants around the city.

You see a lot of the same plants used in landscaping a lot.

So, based on  the site's sunlight and moisture availability, we will kind of custom-make a planting for  that site.

There's a lot of plants that we will carry throughout different locations, but  we try to use as many plants as possible.

We do a mix of flowers and grasses, just  for better structure and composition, but we really try to mix it up so that each  bloom period is represented.

So, you've got something blooming early in the spring, early  summer, late summer, and then into the fall.

So, that way, on top of just looking really nice,  you've got food for pollinators all year round.

- Why are native plants so important to use?

- I think that native plants are important for  so many different reasons.

Of course, there's the whole food web, the ecological, you know, you  need all of these insects to support the bugs, to support the birds, that support the wildlife  all throughout.

But then also, being a farming community, our crops really need pollinators.

I  think they say it's one in three bites of food we eat is thanks to a pollinator species.

Even things  we don't think, like we've got an alfalfa field behind us, it can sustain itself on its own,  but when it gets that alfalfa leafcutter bee, it has higher yields.

So, when you just kind of  think about letting nature do some work to help us in our farming systems, it's just really  important to make sure we have those species, and in a farming community, I think it's even more  important to be able to tie those points together.

- Well, can we please find out  more about the plants that you use?

- Yeah, I would love to show the  plants.

We've got a bunch of them here today.

Some are in the ground, and  some are getting ready to get planted.

- Fall is one of my favorite seasons.

The air  becomes crisp, all the beautiful colors show up in nature, and you can use those colors to guide  your choices on your plate as well.

Just as the greens and leaves fade to reveal reds, oranges,  and golds, those same colors appear in vegetables like pumpkins and winter squash.

These vibrant  colors come from pigments called carotinoids, especially betacarotene, which our bodies convert  to vitamin A. That's the nutrient that helps keep our skin and vision healthy and it also plays  a big role in supporting our immune system.

All pumpkins are technically squash, but not all  squash are pumpkins.

The squash family includes butternut, acorn, buttercup, spaghetti squash, and  many others.

Buttercup squash even has a Midwest connection.

It was introduced in the 1930s by  a horticulture researcher at North Dakota State University.

The rich orange flesh of squash isn't  just beautiful, it's delicious and versatile.

You can roast cubes of squash with olive oil and  herbs, blend cooked squash into creamy soups, or bake halves in the oven with a sprinkle  of cinnamon.

Spaghetti squash can also be an alternative to pasta for a lighter meal.

Just  as the leaves turn color, consider that as a cue for adding more color to your plate.

Many of  us shortchange ourselves on dark orange and dark green vegetables.

I'm Dr.

Julie, bringing  the Field to your Fork.

Until next time.

- So, I've got a collection of different  plants here that we are gonna be using for this location specifically.

One of the things  I wanted to show you was we've got these kits that one of the native plant nurseries we work with  puts together.

It makes it kind of really easy for residents to be able to choose without being  overwhelmed.

Since there's so many different types of native plants, they can kind of pick one  based on what they're looking for at their house.

I can pick one of these kits based on what I'm  looking for for a site that we're gonna plant.

So, for this specific site, I brought some  Short & Tidy kits because they have a lot of plants that stay about three feet or shorter.

That  way it gives it a more pulled-together look.

So, some of the things we've gotten here is prairie  smoke, which is just a really nice, early blooming species.

I think one of the things I see a lot  is those early blooming species aren't a part of plantings very often.

When we've got a big seed  mix out somewhere, they're kind of lacking.

So, I wanted to make sure that when we were doing  these plantings, it very deliberately had those types of plants.

There's about 15 or so different  kits that come, and then you can make a custom kit as well.

So, we've got Shade kits, Tall Grass  Prairie, Short Grass Prairie, Short & Tidy.

It's also really good for boulevards.

We planted the  boulevards here in Dawson last week.

So, we used a lot of the Short & Tidy plants.

There's a Monarch  Special kit.

There's even a kit that you can use in areas where you've been trying to manage  buckthorn, just some aggressive species with long root systems that do good in those parts on  shade so they can give a little bit of competition when you're trying to manage the buckthorn.

This  is part of a community habitat program that we have with Minnesota Native Landscapes that allows  us to get a lot of kits, and get them out to the public through this project for a very affordable  price.

And with the grant, we cost share that.

So, it's made a huge difference on being  able to get these on the landscape.

- Rhyan, how do you know how  many plants to put in a space?

- For the most part, the best rule of  thumb that I've come across is about 15 to 18 inches.

It's hard because  when you first start planting, there are these little plugs, and you see all  this space and you wanna start filling it, but you've just gotta trust it and have some  patience because, since they're perennial, every year they kind of establish themselves  better.

So, it really is good to leave a little more space than you think you should.

Some of the  plants that are larger, the big bunched grasses, you could do as far as two feet apart.

So, usually  we'll look at the site that somebody has, kind of get the square footage and then go backwards  from that to see how many plants to fill in.

- How do you prepare the site?

- Each site's gonna be a little bit different,  but the biggest thing is that you want to make sure you're managing what's there already so that  when your new plants are in, they're not getting over-competed.

So, getting rid of the current  cover or suppressing it.

We use a lot of weed suppressant matting to plant straight into, should  be good for a couple of seasons so it keeps that grass underneath it.

You can do tillage if you're  on a larger area.

If you've got a smaller area, you kind of want to remove the grass or weeds  about two times as big as the native plant is so it doesn't have a competition right around  it.

And then put something over it unless you wanna be kind of weeding it a lot.

Mulch is nice,  or some type of suppressant matting is helpful.

- [Mary] How about, then, the  watering and the maintenance?

- [Rhyan] Yeah, the first year is the biggest  year you really have to worry about with the maintenance.

Since they're little and they're  not fully established yet, they do want about an inch of rain per week, whether that's through  the watering can or from the sky.

After that, they're pretty drought tolerant.

I mean, each  plant is gonna have its moisture regime that it needs.

You've got plants that need something  more wet, they're gonna go on a lower area, or in wetter soils.

Or you've got plants that  are drier and they like rocky areas, but for the most part they can handle drought.

Minnesota goes  through a lot of different weather patterns.

So, since they're native to Minnesota, they're pretty  adapted to dealing with some dry, no-rain spells.

- Then, do you use additional  mulch on top of the mat?

- Yes.

You can do it multiple ways.

That's where  a lot of it is kind of up to what you want it to look like.

If it's somewhere that is getting a  lot of traffic and you want it to look a little bit more pulled together, I recommend putting the  mulch on top of the matting.

If you're putting it out in the backyard and you just want it to  grow and you're not too worried about people passing by seeing it and thinking it looks a  little unclean, you can leave it that way, too.

- [Mary] Do you have to come back and do a replant  sometimes if you lose a plant here and there?

- [Rhyan] Yeah, with any new planting, there's  always gonna be a couple that don't make it.

One of the nice things about having this program  is that we've got plants all the time.

So, if I go back to a site and I see  a certain species didn't do good, we could switch it out for a different one.

That's one of the nice things about this project is it's a lot of real-time learning.

So, sometimes a plant sounds like it might do good in a certain area and it just doesn't, so  we'll just switch it out for something else.

- On the private property, what is the homeowner's  responsibility after you're done planting?

- So, for this grant project, you have to keep  your planting for five years.

So the homeowner's responsibility is trying to keep weeds out, making  sure they're watered, basically keeping the plants alive and in place for those five years, and of  course, hopefully longer, hopefully adding on.

But really all it is is just, if we're gonna do  this project, keep it in place for five years.

- [Mary] What do you have to do in the fall  and over winter to overwinter these plants?

- [Rhyan] In the fall, I know that we're very  accustomed to kind of clipping everything down, but with the native plants being  pollinator-beneficial species, we really wanna leave them there because a lot  of pollinators will overwinter in the stems, or in the base of like a clump grass.

So, you can cut  them down a little bit, but mostly you wanna leave everything standing.

That is the best way, is,  the more you can leave, the better it is.

And then throughout the winter, you might be surprised, a  lot of these plants have pretty neat seed heads.

So, they give some winter interest.

They look nice  with the snow on them.

They look nice all together with different types of textures and shapes,  kind of a new way to appreciate the garden.

And then in the spring, once you start to  see grass growing, dandelions blooming, that's kind of when it's okay  to start trimming those back.

- [Mary] These plants are so tiny.

How long does  it take for them to mature and and look nice?

- [Rhyan] It can vary from plant to  plant.

Some are more eager to bloom, where some need about a year in there before  they will give a flower.

But for the most part, the first year after planting, they're gonna look  really nice.

One of the nice things about working with the plugs is when you're using seeds, you're  waiting years to even get the plug to come up.

So, it's nice being able to start it this  way.

It gives it a head start.

Within the first growing season after, you're gonna  have a pretty good, established planting.

- [Mary] Can we see an established planting, too?

- [Rhyan] Yeah, we actually finished  a project here last May of 2024 in the neighboring town of Boyd.

So,  we could go over there and kind of see what a completed planting looks  like with all of these in full bloom.

- I have a question.

When is the best time to  plant a tree in the late summer or the early fall?

- The best way to plant a tree in late summer,  early fall, is to make sure that you do not bury it too deeply or too shallowly.

And what that  means is you wanna make sure that you bury it to the same depth that it came in the pot that  you purchased it in, or you need to look for the root flare.

And the root flares come out  at the base and you'll actually see them kind of like a little triangle shape.

So, we wanna  make sure those aren't buried.

The next thing you wanna do is make sure that your hole is  dug out twice the width of that root ball.

So, if you look at the container you bought your  tree in, you want to dig it twice as wide, but not twice as deep.

Once the tree is level, you  wanna make sure that you use the 3-3-3 method for mulching, which means you need three inches deep  of mulch, a three foot radius away from the trunk, and most importantly, make sure that there's  no mulch within three inches of your trunk.

You don't wanna bury those root flares that I was  just talking about.

Once you're done mulching, you need to make sure you're watering your tree,  and well, and doing it every few days when you just plant a tree.

You wanna keep watering your  newly planted trees for at least three to five years regularly.

Do not count that little spritz  of rain as sufficient water.

We want to give them an inch of water every single week.

So, if  you're planting a tree late summer and into fall, make sure you have proper aftercare so  you have a healthy tree for years to come.

- [Narrator] Ask the Arboretum Experts  has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated  to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural  areas, horticultural research and education.

- So, these are our Boyd Legacy Gardens.

These  were done as a project through the Board of Water and Soil Resource's demonstration  neighborhood gardens.

The idea here is so that residents can kind of get to see  firsthand what native plants look like.

- [Mary] Why was this location chosen?

- [Rhyan] We chose this location  because it's a public location, so that way if you're a resident who doesn't  maybe have the space or ability to plant native plants at your own house, you could come down  here and still enjoy them aesthetically and kind of get to know the different species  that we would put in a native planting.

- [Mary] How long ago was this planted?

- [Rhyan] So, this grant wrapped up  in 2004 of May, so we're about one year into full establishment.

We worked  on it piecemeal over about two years.

- So, the plants that we saw you planting earlier  in the segment will be this big in about a year?

- Yes.

Of course, weather conditions always  play a part.

But yeah, this is just one year of a new planting, and everything is  already this big and filled in.

So, we wanted to make sure that we incorporated  grasses as well as flowers just because they have good structure and for pollinator  benefits, they have good nesting and overwintering habitat.

They kind of help  some of our plants stand up a little bit more straight too if they've got something  tall alongside them.

We used mostly flowers, but we did try to make sure we incorporated some.

It's probably 85/15% mixes of flowers to grasses.

- So, what is the maintenance  required for an area like this?

- The maintenance is a little more than  people might think.

I think we like to give native plants a lot of credit for being  low-maintenance, which I think they are once you establish them.

But the first couple years  are gonna require some maintenance.

What we've seen specifically with this garden here is we've  had some thistles and some brome encroachment from some of the surrounding land.

We come out in the  spring and try to take care of that.

It's been very rainy this year in this part of the state  so there's been multiple attempts at getting rid of the thistles, and once we remove some of  those, we put more native plants back in to compete and hopefully keep that weed pressure  down in the future.

We've also used mulch to kind of keep the new weed germination from taking  over and that's kind of been a good process, too.

- [Mary] What are the maintenance  requirements in the spring of the year?

- [Rhyan] So, kind of what we advise is to  just leave everything as it is in the fall and winter.

The taller the better, the more  wild the better.

And then in the spring, what we're looking to do is kind of cut back that tall  growth.

This is probably one from last year still, but for the most part we try to come back late  spring after plants have started growing and clip those back so that we know that the pollinators  are no longer using them for housing.

Weeding, hand weeding after a good rain, is helpful if  you've got something that you need to pull out.

But as far as standing stems of natives, we just  use clippers and clip them off.

They're pretty easy.

Or just kind of break them off with  our hands because they break pretty easily.

- I've heard that you should try to burn a  native area also.

How do you feel about that?

- Yeah, in residential areas, that gets a little  bit harder.

So, what we recommend in that way, then, is kind of just mowing down and  removing all the standing stems so that it's not too thick of a thatch layer on the  ground so that any seed that seeds out from a plant still has a chance to germinate in  the future.

So while we might not be able to burn in a residential area, we try to mimic  that process the best we can by taking off any of that stuff that would prevent new  flowers from germinating or new grasses.

- If the seeds fall to the ground, will  they die over the coldness from the winter?

- They won't.

They will kind of lay and  wait until the conditions are right for them to germinate.

And a lot of our prairie  plants actually require a winter season to break their dormancy.

So, we call that  a moist cold stratification process.

So, some plants might need 60 days of that.

Some need 90.

We've even got some plants that need a warm season followed by a cool  season, followed by another warm season, followed by another cool season.

So, that's kind  of one of the benefits of being able to plant live plugs right away is you're not waiting as long  for those mechanisms to unlock the dormancy.

- I see what I think are a lot of  beautiful plants out here.

Can you tell us maybe what just a few of your  favorites are that are growing here?

- Yeah, yeah.

I really enjoy hyssop, fragrant  giant hyssop.

It seems that no matter what time you're looking at it, as long as there is some  blooms on there, there's just gonna be tons and tons of bees.

You can stand there and listen  to them buzzing.

Butterflies love it.

It smells really good, it has a licorice smell, and it's  a very pretty, purple-ish silver color.

I think that's probably one of my favorites.

It also has  a pretty extended bloom season, so you're not just gonna get it for a week or two and then it's  done.

It lasts for a while.

So, that's probably my top favorite.

If we're talking about grasses, I  really love Indian grass.

It has very beautiful bluish-green leaves and the seed head on it.

It  reminds me of the amber fall colors, a little bit starting in the summer and then fading into  the fall, too.

Just very pretty in a planting.

- [Mary] I have seen monarchs  flitting around here.

Do we have some plants here that are  some of their favorites, too?

- [Rhyan] Yeah, one that's in bloom right now  that they particularly like are the different liatris species, all the blazing stars.

As I  look out at the gardens, I can actually see them feeding on it right now.

So, that's kind  of nice this time of year especially.

You can have one tall plant with a bunch of blooms on it  and sometimes you'll get four to five, up to then monarchs using the same one together.

It's really  nice to see that they're enjoying the planting.

- Are there some things that you  have learned in doing this planting?

- Definitely.

I would say some of the biggest  learning experiences for me is to do the best site prep you can do upfront.

If you try to cut  corners or maybe you're not as knowledgeable of what you're planting into, what the site history  is, you might have more weeds in the future.

One thing specifically we ran into here was since  this area was just conventionally mowed prior, we might not have seen some of the weeds that  were there, or what was in the seed bank, but once we kind of dug it up and started  planting, we ran into a lot of bindweed, which can be an issue.

So, I think just  being prepared for that and knowing that even if they're lower-maintenance plants,  there's still gonna be a requirement to do some maintenance, especially up front  when it's first getting established.

- [Mary] We are getting towards the  end of our regular growing season, and there's still such beautiful color out here.

- [Rhyan] Yeah, that's another one of the things  we try to think about when we're designing these gardens, is you want them to look good all year.

So just the same way we think about putting in early blooming species and late blooming species,  we're also trying to think about when things stop growing, how can we still provide beauty?

I  think a really good example of a plant that provides nice fall color would be little blue  stem.

After it's done kind of seeding out, it holds a couple of those fuzzy seed heads  on it, and it has a really nice red, blue, green color.

It just pulls the eye to  it, even if there's not a flower on it.

- Thanks so much for letting us  see how these plants can grow.

- Yeah, thank you.

It's a very fun project.

And I'm happy to share it with people.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie  Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company.

Providing service to  Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor  Company.

We have your best interest at heart.

Mark and Margaret Yeakel Jolene in  honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful  prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden," a community  of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of  "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.