How to attract hummingbirds, butterflies and other pollinators to your Modesto garden

Right now is the time to plant summer and fall blooming plants — and native species can help you attract butterflies, hummingbirds and other helpful pollinators to your Modesto garden.

That’s the message the La Loma Native Garden Pollinator Festival is sending to Californians looking to stretch their green thumbs this spring.

“(Native plants) are pretty,” said Blossom Hill owner Carl Hill, who will have a booth at the April 1 festival.

“The hummingbirds love them, the bees love them, the butterflies love them.”

Here’s why native plants are beneficial to your garden, where to find them in Modesto and how to join in the festivities at the third annual pollinator festival this spring:

Why buy native plants over others?

Rhonda Allen, the La Loma Native Garden coordinator, said the pollen and nectar-making in attractive flowers at nurseries have been bred out of the plant, providing no nutritional value for pollinators.

“People buy those cultivars and put them in their yard and say, ‘Oh look, what a beautiful flower I have’ and they think they’re doing something for the pollinators,” Allen said. “Really what they’re doing is providing nothing for the pollinators.”

These pollinators — including bees — are an important piece of our ecosystem. Many plants, including crops, can’t reproduce without pollen. And these vital creatures are in trouble. Due to “habitat loss, disease, parasites, and environmental contaminants,” pollinator species are declining, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“When you start realizing that there’s a whole world that needs a place to live, these insects and creatures that are very important to the ecosystem, the native plants are the keystone,” Allen said. “Without them, the native species don’t have food.”

What makes a good habitat for California pollinators?

A natural habitat for California pollinators consists of native plants including the gum plant, mugwort, lupins, several varieties of sage, the coffee berry, the California fuchsia and the California poppy.

A plant is considered native if it has lived in an area without any human interaction, developed in that area on its own and likes the regional soil and climate, Allen said.

“The ones that are native to the Central Valley obviously like heat,” Allen said. “If it can live in an area without much rainfall, then it is drought tolerant.”

Allen said a lot of native, drought-tolerant plants go dormant in the summer, making them ideal for climates like the one that exists in the Central Valley, where residents have limited watering days.

“If you water them (in the summer), you will kill their roots because they quit absorbing the minerals and they just sit in water,” Allen said. “They just soak in it and then that smothers them and they die from lack of oxygen.”

Here’s where you can find them near Modesto

Cornflower Farms in Elk Grove and Intermountain Nursery near Fresno are the area’s nearest five-day-a-week native plant nurseries. Blossom Hill is a family nursery on Orange Blossom Road in Oakdale that sells around 100 species of native plants with varying inventory, operating on limited hours as well as appointments.

Blossom Hill owner Hill and his family started selling native plants after they moved to rural Oakdale and started their own garden on their property. They’ve been selling the extra plants they create from cuttings and seed for around 10 years, Hill said, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that Blossom Hill became an established nursery.

“We have about 3,000 plants in the spring and in the fall so we’re not a big, high-volume nursery,” Hill said.

Modesto festival can teach you more

Bees, trees and pretty green things will be featured at La Loma Native Garden’s third annual Pollinator Festival on Saturday, April 1.

While there may not actually be bees visible at the festival considering the recent weather patterns and the pollinator’s dislike of the cold, it’s no joke that children dressed as pollinators will parade down the garden path at the event that starts at 10 a.m on April Fool’s Day.

“We’re doing a little bit of an extra push on home landscapes this year,” Allen said. “We’re basically eliminating the (pollinator’s) natural habitat, so if we could all have little pockets of habitat (in our yards), we can change things.”

Blossom Hill will have an informational booth at the Pollinator Festival at 1805 Encina Avenue in Modesto, where they will also be handing out free plants.

Allen said the pollinator festival is a way to get kids interested in our environment and to appreciate what our pollinators do for us.

“If we didn’t have pollinators, if they suddenly died, all of this food we like to enjoy would not get pollinated,” Allen said.

Along with Blossom Hill, the Pollinator Festival will have informational booths from the Sierra Club, Master Gardeners, Audubon, the East Stanislaus Resource Conservation District and more.

The event will also include a beehive demonstration, information on how to start your own home pollinator garden, activities, crafts and food trucks.

Questions about the Pollinator Festival or the La Loma Native Garden can be directed to kacosner@gmail.com or 209-996-9396.

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