June 2025 Update

June 2025 Update

Our native bees are essential pollinators and need our help. Please see the article at the bottom of this update and share as widely as possible. 

Fairfax/Falls Church residents: help survey invasive plants.

The new Fairfax Tree Rescuers PRISM is organizing invasive plant surveys to document infestations across the county. Volunteers with levels of experience ranging from none to extensive are needed.. Learn more on a Zoom on Sunday, June 8, 7:30 pm. Please fill out this volunteer form and we will send you the link (or the recording, if you can’t make it then).

Upcoming events:

• June 4 and June 7 - Two-part training to become a Certified Weed Warrior on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, authorized to manage invasive plants without direct supervision. Register here.

• Jun 18, 11 am - Flora Foray: Bon Air Park, Arlington. Learn about plant families on a nature hike in Bon Aire Park. We'll visit the rose garden, sun, and shade gardens and trails to identify trees, flowers and plants. All experience levels welcome. Registration Required. $6.

Partner of  the Month: Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy (LWC) was formed in 1995 by four concerned citizens in response to the rapid development and population growth of Loudoun County. Today, this membership-based, values-driven nonprofit focuses its efforts on five areas of engagement, namely, education, citizen science, habitat conservation, conservation advocacy, and stewardship of JK Black Oak Wildlife Sanctuary. Throughout the year, LWC  leads numerous nature and bird walks while helping to educate the public about birds and all the critters one can encounter in Loudoun County. LWC manages the Wildlife Sanctuary Program in Loudoun, providing free home visits to advise residents on how to use their properties to create habitat.

Get the kids into trees (and books) by creating  a DIY summer camp with the online resource Tree Trekkers: A Book-based STEAM Adventure! Produced and offered for free by WETA.

Volunteers needed for Facebook

If you can help manage the Plant NOVA Natives Facebook page, please email plantnovanatives@gmail.com. Many hands make light work - and it is quite light to begin with.

Outreach of the month: Help us find lawn and landscaping companies. 

When you spot trucks with the name of a landscape company in Northern Virginia, please snap a photo and email it to plantnovanatives@gmail.com. We’ll add new companies to our mailing list to invite them to our English and Spanish native plant conferences for landscape professionals. Independent companies in particular have very few educational opportunities and welcome these invitations. 

Report your native tree and shrub plantings

Please help Northern Virginia meet its tree-planting obligations by reporting your tree and shrub plantings here. So far 18,878 have been reported!

Report your tree rescues

Millions of trees in Northern Virginia are at risk from invasive non-native vines. You can help by saving them on your own land or by volunteering on public land. (Plant NOVA Natives/Plant NOVA Trees only does educational outreach, so all this work is done under the auspices of our partnering organizations or other landowners.). So far, 18,554 tree rescues have been reported in Northern Virginia. Please add your report here.  

Next Steering Committee meeting – June 5, 10am-noon via videoconferencing. All are welcome. Check our Event Calendar for future meetings.

This month’s newsletter articles to share. For social media, please use this link. 

Happy Bees, Happy Yard

by Eileen Ellsworth

Gardening to attract as many bees as possible is more than a rewarding pastime. It’s a blend of purpose, beauty, and connection to something grand and greater than we are. The growing season is marching by, but sufficient time remains to add a few new bee-favorite flowering plants and shrubs to your property. Bees are key to the environment. Their health reflects the state of the health and interconnectedness of the surrounding world. If the bees are happy, so are the habitats they occupy.

Bees are among the most efficient and effective pollinators in the insect kingdom. Pollinators ensure the reproduction of 80% of all flowering plants, a Herculean feat that bees accomplish … inadvertently. In the process of collecting nectar and pollen for their own use, bees become covered in the plant pollen, fertilizing plants as they move from bloom to bloom. The plants that bees pollinate have played their part as well, evolving flowers that are custom-built to attract bees by accommodating their unique preferences, anatomy, and behavior. It is an ancient and productive partnership between two very different forms of life.

In more recent times we’ve come to appreciate the direct benefit bees provide to uncultivated ecosystems. In meadows, for example, bees cross-pollinate many different plants, which leads to genetic diversity and stronger, more resilient plant stocks. Bees promote the diversity of plants that clean the air and water and reinvigorate the soil. Plants are the foundation of food chains that feed herbivores and, subsequently, carnivores. The native plants that grow and thrive in undisturbed natural settings fix carbon, release oxygen, and mitigate soil erosion. In short, the health of wild ecosystems is greatly enhanced by the activity and industry of bees.

The non-native European honeybee, which arrived in North America in the 1600’s, is well known and recognized in our region. However, the ecosystem depends on the 400+ species of native bees that were here in Virginia to begin with. Eighty percent of them are generalists and will visit many different flowers. The rest are specialists that need access to specific native plants to survive.

Native bumblebees are a good example of generalists. There are 14 species of native bumble bees in Northern Virginia, all of which are adorable, hardworking, and fast. A bumblebee can pollinate 6 blueberry flowers in the time it takes a European honeybee to pollinate just one. They are also highly social insects that live together in colonies. The native Spring Beauty Bee, on the other hand, is a specialist that emerges in early spring and relies heavily on the Spring Beauty ephemeral flower to survive. They are small, solitary bees with a slender appearance, the females of which are often seen carrying large amounts of pink pollen collected from the Spring Beauties.

But whether they are large or small, generalists or specialists, social or solitary, all native bees are suffering. Habitat loss and fragmentation, pesticide use, and climate change are the primary causes. Their food sources and nesting sites are disappearing. Their numbers are declining, some drastically, others less so. Despite these complex threats, there is much we as individuals can do to protect them.  

1. Tuck some of the native flowers and shrubs that are known to support bees into blank spaces in your garden. (See the Gardening for Bees link, below). After the heat of summer fades, add some spring ephemerals to help the early season native bees next year. It’s worth mentioning that bees are highly unlikely to sting when gathering food, as many gardeners will attest. When issues occur, it’s almost always because bees are defending their nests, and that is only an issue for a few species.

2. Remove non-native invasives from your property. They greatly disrupt native ecosystems.

3. Plant and maintain a pollinator garden that is reserved exclusively for native plants. With some care and planning, it can mimic a mini meadow.

4. Add a source of water like a birdbath to your garden.

5. Don’t spray for mosquitoes. The mosquitoes tend to quickly reappear, but almost every other insect the mosquito fog reaches, including bees, will be annihilated.

6. Avoid the use of any pesticide.

7. Most native bees nest in the ground, so leave some bare ground in your garden or landscape for tunneling.

8. Think about leaving dead stalks in place for a year or two. Some native bees overwinter or reproduce in those stalks and need time to grow and emerge. 

Bees are small but mighty creatures who need our help as never before. Our own future is served when we help shelter, feed, and protect them. Let’s see what we can do to help. For more information about native bees and the plants that attract and support them, visit the “Gardening for Bees” page of the Plant NOVA Natives website, which, among other interesting information, offers suggestions for pairing specific plants with the bees that are known to visit their blooms.