Turning yards into sustainable pollinator gardens

Daisies, crimson sweet william and bee balm, pink and purple coneflowers, wild quinine, feathery blue star, and an array of wildflowers fill the meadow in Zibi and Kasia Bieniaszewski’s front yard in Ambler.

The pretty, tousled meadow contrasts with the manicured lawns all around the Bieniaszewskis’ split-level home. A sign painted with a cardinal and monarch butterfly reads: “Whitpain Township Sustainable Property.”

Zibi, who is a member of the Whitpain Township Environmental Advisory Council, is on a mission to convince other homeowners to turn lawns into native habitats to support pollinators and reduce stormwater runoff.

He is happy to share his passion with neighbors who stop by his corner property to admire his plantings. So far, he has had only a few converts.

When the young couple across the street asked whether he would mind if they started a raised vegetable garden in their front yard, “I told them not only wouldn’t I mind, I would help,” he said.

The Bieniaszewskis met while they were both working for Ikea in their native Poland and came to the United States in 2002 to work for the company here. Zibi, 57, is a project manager at Ikea. Kasia, 50, who is now a registered nurse, works at Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Kasia said when she and Zibi bought their home in 2004, “our daughter Janka was the environmentalist.” The then 11-year-old was learning in school about eco-friendly habitats.

At that time, their yard consisted of lawn and a few trees. But the Bieniaszewskis postponed creating a new habitat in their yard to prioritize renovating their 1954 house.

“We ripped everything down to the studs,” said Zibi, who did much of the work himself.

The three-bedroom, three-bath home is decorated with Ikea furnishings and Kasia’s abstract paintings. She has a master’s in fine arts.

After completing home renovations, Zibi learned about sustainable gardening at Wissahickon Trails workshops.

Now, the sliding glass doors Zibi installed in the family room open onto a patio and backyard garden.

He also took a class sponsored by the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association. He has three hives, and he gives friends jars of pale gold honey produced in the spring, when bees feed on dandelion and clover, and amber honey produced in fall, when they feed on asters and goldenrod.

Zibi also welcomes non-colonizing solitary bees to his garden. “They are better pollinators,” he said.

On the brick wall on the side of his home are hexagonal bamboo “homes” he built for solitary bees. Kasia designed the structures with numerous crevices for bees to nest.

The sloping backyard is planted with yellow honeysuckle, spirea, asters, and button bushes with white globe blossoms. Near the curb, at the lowest point of the third-of-an-acre, is a rain garden where deep-rooted plants like viburnum absorb excess water.

Vermilion coral bells grow under a giant American chestnut tree with bark outgrowths in the shape of a man’s face. The tree is as old as the house.

Zibi grows herbs and a few tomato plants, but he and Kasia purchase most produce from Weavers Way Co-op and local farmers’ markets.

A white-flowered Japanese willow is flanked by maroon-leafed elderberry trees. Nearby, tall red cannas attract hummingbirds.

Zibi said he is “not an extremist” about having native plants, as long as a plant is noninvasive and a pollinator. It concerns him, though, when he sees hybrid flowers with thick double petals that keep birds and insects from reaching the pollen. Once, lawns were covered with nitrogen-producing clover, he said, but then, lawn-care companies convinced homeowners clover was not attractive.

Zibi finds it is beneficial to leave some dead branches and twigs in the yard when the season ends. Giving a demonstration, he snaps off a dry coneflower stalk. The hollow stalk, he pointed out, can provide a winter home for insects, and the stalks stake up new plants.

Staff from Redbud Native Plant Nursery in Media designed his first planting bed, and he still gets plants there. He also sources seeds online and swaps with other gardeners. Not everything flourishes.

A garden is “a work in progress,” Zibi said. “There are failures all the time. It’s part of the journey.”

Do you have a beautiful garden? Nominate your garden by email (and send some digital photographs) at properties@inquirer.com.