There’s a small pile of books on a table by my desk - the writers are my go-to references for garden questions. Heather Holm, Doug Tallamy and the late Henry Koch are my guides, and of course Lorraine Johnson, whose
100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants has been by my side since its publication in 1999.
Now Johnson, along with co-author York University professor Sheila Colla, has produced another winner:
A Garden for the Rusty-patched Bumblebee - Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators (Douglas & McIntyre) is a wonderful introduction to the world of our pollinating friends.
Like so many other insects, the Rusty-patched is a bee that was once abundant across eastern Canada and North America and is now in steep decline. In Canada, the last individual was found, by Colla, in 2009 at Pinery Provincial Park. In 2012 it had the “unfortunate distinction” of becoming the first native bee to be designated as endangered in Canada.
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