The Gardens on Spring Creek

  Honeybee enjoys the flower of a spearmint plant in the Friendship Growing Garden What’s Blooming:    Friendship Growing Garden by Jessica Clarke, Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek   If you have wandered through the Children’s Garden and made your way into the Friendship Growing Garden, you may have noticed that there are still flowers in our food beds. Most of the blooms are growing on perennial herbs such as Mentha spicata (spearmint), Mentha x piperita (chocolate mint), and annuals, like Tropaeolum (nasturtium) and varieties of marigolds such as Tagetes erecta (Mexican marigold). The purpose for leaving the flowers on the plants is to provide highly necessary food sources to sustain our pollinators into winter. Many pollinators, such as bees, butterflies and others, need nectar and pollen as a food reserve for the winter months.   For example, the original queens of a bumblebee hive will die off, and new queens will emerge late summer / fall. In order for the new queen