Pollinator Pockets: Prime Places in the City

Designated as a Bee City, St. Thomas is dedicated to preserving and enhancing habitats for these essential creatures. This commitment is evident as you explore the city’s parks, gardens, and green spaces, each thoughtfully designed to support the delicate balance of our ecosystem.

Take yourself on a journey to uncover the hidden gems of pollinator habitats that dot this vibrant city, and discover how St. Thomas is leading the way in environmental stewardship and biodiversity conservation. There are incredible places to explore and discover more about the world of pollinators, how our community works to protect and expand habitats!

This self-guided exploration is definitely the most vibrant during the summer months, but taking the opportunity to visit some of your favourite spots throughout the season can offer new and different perspectives and understanding about biodiversity, local plants and pollinators.

Throughout this exploration, you'll learn more about the habitats needed for pollinators like birds, beetles, moths, bees and butterflies. These little creatures are responsible for one of every three bites of food we consume - so while they are small, they have a big impact on how we live our lives. They are vital to our food supply and need our help, and respect.

You'll also have the opportunity to learn more about native plants and why they are important to our local pollinators.  

The intention of this exploration is the highlight the implementation, conservation and restoration efforts of pollinator habitats around the community to expand understanding of these habitats and encourage exploration around the city while connecting to nature and recognizing the importance of pollinators to our ecosystems and ourselves. 

Let's go explore together!

St. Thomas Public Library

📍 Location: 153 Curtis Street, St. Thomas, ON
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Seed Library

The St Thomas Library has a collection of open pollinated plants available for check out. Meaning, they need to be pollinated by bees, moths, birds and/or by rain/wind. While many of the varieties available are for growing human food - there are a few native flower varieties as well!

The seed library is free to access for those with a St. Thomas Public Library Card. For anyone who enjoys gardening, you can borrow seeds and sow them in your garden and then collect and save seeds for next year as a way of giving back and making an effort towards sustainability. Exchanging and sharing within your local community encourages biodiversity in seed availability.

So next time you visit the Library, check out the Seed Library instead of only borrowing books from the library. Even if you don’t consider yourself a gardener but take interest in beautifying and diversifying your garden. You don’t need to be an expert to support pollinators in your backyard!

Reading Garden

The St Thomas Public Library lower level gardens include native plant species such as Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus. It is only found in Southwestern Ontario and likes to be planted in sunny, dry, well drained soils. Blooming in spring, they are relatively short lived flowers. 

Also found here is Pearly Everlasting. It is highly valued in gardens for its long bloom time from early summer to fall. Yellow flowers enclosed in white bracts. This plant is a host to the larval stage (caterpillars) of The American Lady and Painted Lady butterflies. They create a silken web around the plant to feed on in early spring.

These gardens will be undergoing some renovation in 2024 to lean more into native species and will work to showcase just how much you can do with limited garden spaces - offering inspiration for the home gardener to adopt some inspiration! The Elgin Pollinator Team will be installing plants here to maintain a pollinator patch, and then plants will find a new home at the elevated park. Check back often to see the progress!

THe Horton Farmers' Market

📍Location: 10 Manitoba Street, St. Thomas, ON
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Depave Paradise Project

In the summer of 2022 in partnership with the London Environmental Network, the City of St. Thomas removed 70 square meters of pavement to create a pop of lush native plants (180 were planted!) to improve stormwater management and create habitat for local pollinators. 

These gardens are now well established and full of native blooms like Canada Anemone, Mountain Mint, and Wild Bergamot. They offer options for the pollinators around the market, but because of their love for sweet treats, wasps can still be a common bother on market days. Unfortunately, these little guys are often considered pests and are negatively associated with painful stings and aggressive behaviour. This negative perception should be changed however, as wasps play a critical role in pollination and pest control and are important insects for our ecosystems!

Watch the transformation!

ST. THomas Elevated Park

📍 1 Centre St, St Thomas

Scree Garden

Entering the park at the eastern side, the Scree garden is filled with native pollinator friendly plants. A Scree garden is similar to a rock garden where sun loving plants thrive in dry and well drained soil/habitats. Prairie Smoke is one of the native plants present. It is a valuable resource to bumblebee queens emerging from hibernation in early spring looking for a food source. Once
Prairie Smoke is pollinated, the pink flowers puff out into plumes, looking feather-like blowing in the wind.

Stumpery

Wild Geranium thriving on a log. A native plant sought out by bees and chipmunk that feed on the seeds.

Some people might overlook the importance of decaying logs or stumps and its benefits to attract all kinds of insects, birds and bees. What is a stumpery? It’s an intentional woodland habitat arrangement that could be made up of mosses, ferns, shade loving perennials, rocks, spring ephemerals and of course, stumps and logs. If you have woody material such as a tree stump in
your garden or want to repurpose logs, you can add this pollinator friendly feature to a shaded spot in your garden and provide habitat for other wildlife. This was the first time while walking this trail when I noticed the flowers and plants growing on the logs, catching my eye and drawing me in for closer observation.

Stumpery along the eastern trail until the Boardwalk starts.

For a more mature forest look a Stumpery, wander the trails between Lake Margaret and Pinafore Park - stop to learn at the interpretive panel.

Trillium Artwork

Trilliums, Ontario’s provincial flower, sweeps the woodland habitat floors, emerging very early spring with its vibrant three-petaled white flowers and green leaves. Spring ephemerals have a very brief life cycle and are critical to early season pollinators. They allow early access to nectar and pollen resources (as few flowers are in bloom at that time) before the trees fill in and they
become shaded out and go dormant until next spring. Other ephemerals along the linear elevated park include wild ginger and bloodroot. Once spring ephemerals bloom, throughout the season the lush greenery will become a great native groundcover.

The flowers are often short lived - but you can enjoy them all year through this art installation.

Lake Margaret

📍Pinafore Park Trail Head
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One can wander around Lake Margaret everyday and still notice something different and enchanting about the naturalized surroundings of this multi-use trail surrounding the man-made lake. The lake is derived from a gravel pit that was discontinued for use in the mid to late 1990s. After 2000, the surface area of the lake was reduced to improve fish habitat and water quality conditions.

To see it now, many new residents to St. Thomas have no idea that Lake Margaret is not a natural lake -- this is what makes it such a phenomenal example of the time and intentionality it can take to foster a naturalized environment that can provide adequate biodiversity and habitat for our local wildlife to thrive. 

Some of your explorations of pollinator spaces around St. Thomas may take you to areas that are in various stages of naturalization infancy and it's important to trust the process a bit, as establishing thriving naturalized areas can be a challenging and long process. This is one of the reasons why it's important to care for the spaced we have!

Decomposition

Entering the trail from the back of Pinafore Park, there is an interpretive sign off the trail about decomposition. It’s fascinating to learn about different species in the ecosystem and their contributions. These small creatures often go overlooked. Did you know pollinators also include beetles, flies and ants? They do so in search of nectar or other sustenance leading to pollinating plants they encounter. These insects are also the food source for birds and bats who also pollinate. Pollinators and other beneficial insects require shelter from predators or for nesting and overwintering. Many bees and flies burrow near the top of the soil, in dead stems, piles of leaves or in wood cavities.

Bat Habitat
📍​along the trail

Bat houses were installed around the lake in an effort to provide the endangered Little Brown Myotis bat a nesting space. Even though there are no pollinating bats in Canada, insects attracted to these wildflowers will then attract bats, a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Many native flower seeds surrounding the houses were planted in an effort to provide food and resources to them. You can find Northern Bush Honeysuckle, a deciduous shrub flowering from early late spring to late summer bearing small yellow capsule-like flowers rich in nectar. Its exfoliating bark reveals an orange inner bark that catches the eye.
 
500 native trees and 1,000 wildflowers were planted around the lake from funding for the Lake Margaret Habitat Restoration Project in 2022 along with a commitment to the ongoing removal of six invasive species.  Planting native plants around the lake will reduce soil erosion by reinforcing the soil and providing valuable wildlife habitat.. A variety of wildflowers offers season round nectar and pollen for insects, bees, and birds.

Pond & Wetland
📍​along the trail
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There is a small pond/wetland area that is always a place to stop and admire along the Lake Margaret Trail. Seasonally you may spot turtles sunning themselves on a log or occasionally some water fowl. The waterlilies can be seen in bloom from mid June to September.

These plants poke their flowers out of the water, allowing pollinators such as bees, flies, and mainly beetles, to access the male and female parts of the plant above the surface.

However, to attract pollinators, water lilies use an interesting and macabre pollination technique called entrapment. The flowers release a fluid prior to releasing pollen that, combined with the arrangement of the petals, trap and kill the insects in the flower. Once the flower has collected the pollen grains on the bodies of these unsuspecting insects, the flower is fertilized, and then releases its own pollen for other pollinating insects to collect and transport to neighboring flowers, continuing the cycle.

Pollination of these semi-aquatic plants help maintain the biodiversity of wetlands. These environments act as greenhouse gas sinks, buffer coastlines and naturally filter fresh water. They are essential for human society and it's important to conserve them and the pollinators that keep them alive!

Angus McKenzie Trail

📍Access from the Whistlestop Trail
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All along the Whistlestop Trail and the Angus McKenzie trail (and all 30km of recreational trails maintained by the city) you will notice that outside of 1m off the trail is no longer mowed to promote native plant growth. It's not unusual to spot fireflies in some of the more canopied areas of these trails during the summer months.

 Butterfly Meadow
📍near Sauve Ave.
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Even though it’s called a butterfly meadow, this meadow supports a myriad of beneficial pollinating insects such as birds, moths and bees that are drawn to the various insects and native plant species. Butterflies need sheltered habitat to be protected from wind and other elements, plenty of sun and a safe place to lay their eggs. It’s important to have a variety of colour and scent all season long. Habitats rich in butterflies and moths are also rich in invertebrates.

This meadow can stop you in your tracks as you watch these delicate creatures live among us.
 
Eastern Monarch’s are the only butterflies to migrate. They are the only species to make a two way trip to overwinter in Central Mexico for six months. They will travel an astonishing 3,000 - 4,000 kilometers each fall. Monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates and therefore need to leave their summer breeding grounds but will find their way back each year.
 
Native plants in this meadow include Milkweed which Monarchs exclusively lay their eggs on. Aster and Goldenrod will keep butterflies visiting all season long. Butterflies rely on these host plants to live out their life cycle. Other butterfly species can lay their eggs, emerge as larvae (caterpillars) to adults and overwinter without migrating. 

​Orchard Park Pollinator Corridor
📍Orchard Park, off Empire Parkway

​Native pollinator corridors are beneficial as they are pesticide free habitats that provide an abundance of shelter and nutrients, for small wildlife as well. Echinacea is a very popular pollinator species planted along this corridor. With its vibrant flowers and cone landing pad, you can find it to be a busy place to be! After blooming and in late fall to winter, their seed heads will be a fantastic source of food and attract hungry birds such as goldfinches.

While walking this trail, you may be amazed by a choir of frogs coming from the woody/marshy areas beside the trail in the early spring. Even in the early warm days when not much is in bloom, you can feel and hear the arrival of Spring!

While observing my surroundings in this small forest, it brought me back to my internship last summer while working on bird and pollinator forest surveying. We would take 10 minute audio recordings of the birds at certain plots in the forests and needed to stay still and silent; listening to a variety of different bird calls overlapping each other as they communicated. I really embraced that experience as it allowed me to be still with nature. And while you may not need to stand still and silent, I recommend trying it surrounded by nature as often as you can!

As for bumblebees, I had a great time studying, catching (without harm), identifying and releasing them. We would visit various forest tracts and patiently wait for bees to come buzzing by and observe their abundance and behaviours. If they were travelling close to the forest floor it would appear they were nest searching or looking for food. Bees need the forest floor and its fallen leaves to nest in the ground and as an overwintering habitat.

In your own yards, you can avoid using mulch in at least some of your garden areas leaving some soil open for these bees to access. By leaving the leaves after they fall in Autumn you can also provide much needed habitat to let these little workers to overwinter. Those decaying leaves can offer some much needed organic matter for your plants in the spring too!

Neighbourhoods

Doug Tarry Homes

​Doug Tarry Homes is a generous supporter to the pollinators in their new developments such as Harvest Run, Eagle Ridge, Miller’s Pond and Parish Park. Recognizing the importance of native species, and even more so, planting Ontario Carolinian species which will naturally thrive in this area.

By implementing native wildflower pathways/patches in their subdivisions, tallgrass prairie habitats, and naturalized ponds and trails, taking a visit and walking through these subdivisions will not disappoint and will peak your curiosity while feeling the connectivity to nature.

Harvest Run
📍 Walking Map
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Tallgrass prairies used to occupy a big space in South Western Ontario. Now, it is more rare to see. Folks may think this habitat doesn’t look “showy enough” but in hindsight, there is more happening in front of you that meets the eye. Unlike non-native species, it takes time and patience for native plants to establish themselves. It may take a few seasons to see sites fill in but
the longevity result of planting natives outlasts non-native species. Planting a variety of different wildflowers will allow blooms to be present from as early as April through to October, allowing year round resources to many wildlife by providing shelter, breeding spaces and nesting areas, attracting pollinators, mammals and birds.

July and August is the best time of year to visit this pond and experience the breathtaking view. An abundance of coreopsis, switchgrass, big blue & little bluestem and Indian grass have been planted, along with native trees and bird houses within the vicinity The Harvest Run linear trail offers wildflower corridors along your travels.

Eagle Ridge
📍 Walking Map

Eagle Ridge features naturalized patches/trails, ponds and direct access to a striking walking trail to the Angus Mackenzie trail that leads to Pinafore Park and Lake Margaret. This was my first time visiting this area and I felt like exploring a secluded path surrounded by naturalized areas, young native trees and bird boxes. I came across a beautiful Tree Swallow. I chose to stay back to admire and give the creature its space. Birds are major contributors to the health of the ecosystem by dispersing seeds, pollinating plants, helping balance ecosystems and controlling insect populations. There is a decline in bird populations, therefore, protecting habitats is critical to us all.

Miller's Pond
📍 Enter at Benjamin Parkway and Elm

Miller’s Pond offers beneficial animal corridors, naturalized ponds, wetlands and spaces to enjoy. There is an astonishing 6 meter tree buffer around the whole property. Thousands of trees were planted in partnership with Kettle Creek Conservation Area around the 200 acre site. An animal corridor connects two habitats together, allowing various wildlife to safely inhibit,
shift, and migrate from one habitat to another. These corridors support many different wildlife whether they swim, run or fly.
In Parish Park you can notice the cut grass section through the park as well as naturalized spaces left alone. I came across a “tread lightly wildflower habitat🙂” sign and it was a good reminder to respect these natural spaces by not disturbing them and enjoy the view from a distance. A Tree sign explains the importance of the Carolinian species of Ontario.

Murals

garden of hope

​​📍 10 Princess Ave, St. Thomas, ON

Garden of Hope was created to inspire. Each flower represents something different and were chosen by guests to the Inn. One of my personal favourites, Monarda didyma (Bee Balm) represents health and prosperity. It is a native flower and a member of the Mint family. I've always seen this plant in my garden being visited most by bumble bees but it's a pollinator magnet to hummingbirds, butterflies and other beneficial insects. Their striking red tubular flowers bloom in June-August. The leaves of Bee Balm can be used in herbal teas, providing a minty flavour.

Wonder and wander

📍745 Talbot Street, St. Thomas, ON

Wonder and Wander features Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan), a very popular native wildflower, attracting a variety of butterflies, moths and bees. Its classic yellow daisy-like flowers and dark brown center provides many wildlife resources, blooming from July-September. After blooming, the seed heads of the flower are nutritious food sources for birds in fall and winter.

Interesting fact: Unlike humans, bees are able to see ultraviolet light when it comes to finding their nectar and pollen resources. UV light helps them find landing zones on plants from a distance.

Greetings From St. Thomas

📍613 Talbot Street, St. Thomas, ON

Greetings From St. Thomas represents the history, unique landmarks and diversity found in the city. St Thomas officially became a Bee City in 2023 and continues to make an effort to enhance, implement and protect pollinator friendly habitats. To become a Bee City, the city needs to be taking action such as maintaining biodiverse habitats, contributing to education and celebrating Pollinator Week in June each year. Great job St. Thomas!

Natures House

📍38 Parkside Dr, St. Thomas, ON

Nature's House is located off the famous Whistlestop Trail, this mural includes a showy Bloodroot flower. As a spring ephemeral, this plant only blooms for a short amount of time beginning in April. Blooms open to the sun and close at night. While all parts of the plant are toxic, its pollen attracts different kinds of bees and ants such as mason and carpenter bees. Bees and ants belong in the same Order. Ants are attracted to a substance called elaiosome, part of the seed that is rich in protein and other nutrients. Therefore, ants play a contributing factor dispersing seeds while carrying them back to their nests to eat, where seeds are later discarded.

the howl

📍295 Talbot Street, St. Thomas, ON

The Howl takes a look at expanding public knowledge on how to be better stewards of the natural environment and land
is essential to protecting all kinds of biodiversity subject to destruction by human interaction and new developments. Improving/restoring habitats for all animals and species in these areas is a necessity for their survival and contributions to the ecosystem.

Additional REsources

Exploring the city has been exciting and I look forward to following the progress St. Thomas is continuing to work towards. There are so many ways we can support and protect pollinators in our own backyards. Taking little steps will make a big difference. By understanding, preserving and creating these diverse habitats, we can create a world where people and pollinators can flourish together.

Websites

• Bee City Canada
• Pollinator Partnership
• Xerces

​Books

• ​The Gardener’s Guide to Native Plants of the Southern Great Lakes Region by Rick Gray​ and Shaun Booth
• A Garden for the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee

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AUTHOR

BLAYNE DUNHAM
​Blayne has always had a passion for helping the environment and a love for working outdoors.
She pursued horticulture for many years and decided to shift her focus and explore facets in the conservation field. She's intrigued by the beauty of pollinators and the essential work they do for the world.