Imagine you have just made yourself a cup of green tea, added a dollop of honey and settled into a comfy spot outside your back door or by your window box. As you sip you notice a stir among the leaves of herbs you planted earlier that spring. Two honey bees and a solitary iridescent-green bee are busy getting their morning nourishment from sage, chives, fennel and thyme blossoms. It is an exquisite moment. To paraphrase Thoreau, honey sweetens twice, when you taste it and when sweet feelings shimmer through you because you have given the bees something in return.
It would be a drab and hungry world if bees, butterflies, and other pollinators disappeared, because their services enable 70 percent of all flowering plants and a third of our food plants to keep reproducing. Seeds and fruits from pollinated plants help birds and bears and all manner of other wild creatures fill their bellies, too. Yet, as we know, honeybees and other pollinators are in trouble. Reasons for drastic pollinator population decline range from habitat loss and degradation to use of pesticides and introduced diseases, but however you look at it, in most cases pollinators suffer due to human activity. Thus there is a double benefit when you provide a treat for them on your deck or balcony. First, by creating microhabitats you are helping to balance the contribution of human beings to the general well-being of the world, to tip the scales of karmic justice a bit toward balance. Second, the time you spend in the presence of this microhabitat could be beneficial for your mental health.
A few moments in the presence of your pollinator garden can help to restore your ability to focus on things that matter to you. Frances E. Kuo, director of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory, wrote, “It is striking that the presence of a few trees and some grass outside (an) apartment building could have any measurable effect on its inhabitants’ functioning. It is all the more surprising that such a modest dose of nature could enhance an individual’s capacity to manage the most important issues in life.”
Advances in neuro-science have recently confirmed that something as simple as a walk through a natural setting produces significant changes in the portion of our brain known as the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC). This area appears to stimulate behavior that is focused on the self, often with negative thoughts, and sometimes to a degree that the person becomes depressed. Likely, most of us have experienced occasional moments when we become brooding and isolated from the world around us due to excessive focus on an upsetting event. What is helpful at such times is a distraction that feels positive. The science now shows that some moments in nature can supply that positive distraction.
A study conducted at Stanford University and reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal last year demonstrated that a walk through a portion of the city with trees and other vegetation, at a neurobiological level, “led to decreases in sgPFC activity, a brain region that previously has been shown to be associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both depressed and healthy individuals.”
The suggestion is that when we are in the presence of a stretch of the natural environment we are less likely to be overly focused within our own inner world and remain more healthfully connected to the living world outside our skulls. So when we linger by a micro-world of plants and pollinators, we are partaking of a form of restoration that has belonged to our species for millions of years.
When you sit quietly near a container in which herbs are flowering and bees and butterflies are gliding in for a nectar snack, you create an opportunity to engage your body, mind and spirit through your deep connection with that tiny habitat. The body calms and there is curtailment of hormones such as cortisol, secreted in response to the stressors of modern life.
Your local nursery can supply a suitable container, potting soil and several varieties of herbs preferred by pollinators in your region. You also can consult a plant guide published by Xerces Society, a wonderful conservation organization that works to protect pollinators and their habitats.
Once you have established your container garden, you can be a pollinator of consciousness by mentoring others to create their pollinator patches. This is a way of adding to the biodiversity of your region by expanding the existence of small, flowery spaces that encourage plant-pollinator interactions. Giving truly and well to the wellness of the community of all beings will be a balm to your own sense of well-being.
—Terril L. Shorb founded the Sustainable Community Development program at Prescott College and loves the pollinator patch he encourages behind his home in northern Arizona.
