Another reason to keep garden waste at home

A new book that came in the mail, The Pollinator Victory Garden by Kim Eierman, made me glad that I'd started a brush pile this fall. Until recently, I couldn’t picture a suitable spot for this amenity in my third-of-an-acre suburban lot.

    The ecological reason to cultivate a brush pile is to provide wildlife habitat. Kim Eierman’s book focuses on insects, so she recommends brush piles as shelter for bees. She points out that 30 percent of North America’s 4,000 native bees are cavity nesters. They need safe small spaces where they’re sheltered from the rain. Some find cavities that birds or other insects have made in dead trees, stumps or fallen logs.

Carpenter bees are cavity nesters-photo Anita Gould

    Other than wood chip mulch, there’s a shortage of dead wood on the ground in our yard, due to my previous habit of cleaning up at soil level. I now realize that’s unnecessary and eliminates potential habitat for creatures I want in the garden. I’m allowing dead tree limbs to lie on the ground in inconspicuous spots, but it’ll be a while before they soften and rot.

This downed tree in a local conservation area offers shelter for native insects

    The brush pile I’ve started intends to serve a dual purpose: containing our over-enthusiastic puppy and offering shelter for wildlife. Eager to play together, our Lola and Ruby, the dog next door, discovered spots where they could dig under the wooden fence between their yards. 

"Who, me?"

They applied themselves with energy. I went to work reinforcing our perimeter with wire fencing held down with bricks, paving stones, and any big rocks I could find. 

    There was a vulnerable space between two wire compost bins and the new chain link fence that joins the wooden fence line. I blocked off this corner with more wire fencing. In addition to foiling a homegrown prison break, the narrow, enclosed space now houses my new brush pile. As I build up the pile, I plan to add bundles of twigs tied with twine to keep insect nests dry.

Starting the brush pile with pine branches that came down in a heavy wind

    Cavity-nesting bees also find spaces inside plant stems. I’m already accommodating them by letting stalks stand through the winter. We’ve got elderberry, raspberry, and hydrangea bushes, so I’m glad to hear that their pithy stems make particularly good nesting spots.

Spongy stems of oak leaf hydrangea can be excavated by bees to make nests

    I love the idea of an insect hotel. That’s a human-made collection of promising nesting material, such as bunches of hollow stalks tightly packed together, clumps of dry leaves, cut lengths of bamboo stakes, ceramic blocks with small cavities built in, and tree branches or chunks of lumber with holes drilled for convenient insect access. 

This is an insect hotel in Germany. Cool, right?

The thing about this approach, though, is that the cavities need periodic cleaning. I’m not sure I can be counted on to clean an insect hotel on a regular schedule. For now, I’m letting nature do the work.

    After reading the first chapter of Kim’s book, I can already tell it’s going to up my game. While I wait to put Kim’s advice into practice next spring, I’ll be throwing fallen branches on the brush pile instead of filling yard waste bags.