Your Pollinator Garden Should Be Safe for Pollinators. Ours Are.
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When you plant a pollinator garden, you want pollinators. That sounds obvious. But if the plants in that garden were grown with systemic insecticides, you may be doing more harm than good. At Berns, we can tell you with confidence that our pollinator plants are safe for pollinators.
Not every garden center can say that.
Here's why.
The Problem With How Most Plants Are Grown
Pesticides leave residuals. Even when applied correctly and safely, chemical applications leave residue on plant foliage that persists long after the spray dries. For most plants in most situations that residue is manageable. But when you are growing plants specifically intended to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds — plants that pollinators will land on, feed from, and spend time on — that residue matters.
Systemic insecticides go further. These products are absorbed directly into plant tissue and remain there for weeks or months after application. A plant treated with a systemic insecticide can look perfectly healthy and vibrant at the garden center and still be carrying chemistry that is harmful to the very insects you are trying to attract.
Butterflies Lepidoptera and bees Hymenoptera are among the most sensitive insects to pesticide exposure. When you are building a garden specifically to support these populations, knowing how your plants were grown is not a small detail. It is the whole point.
What We Do Instead
Our pollinator plants are grown without pesticides. In fact this biological program runs across all of our production — it is not a special exception made for the pollinator collection, it is simply how we grow at Berns. Chemical applications are rare and made only when absolutely necessary. Watching this year's pollinator collection come into the garden center the way it has — healthy, blooming, and completely free of pesticide treatments — is exactly why we grow this way. These plants have not had a single application, and that is something we are very proud of.
Instead we run a full biological pest management program — living, working populations of predatory and parasitic insects that manage pest pressure the way nature intended. This is not a compromise or a workaround. It is a highly sophisticated approach that produces exceptional plants.
Here is what is actually working in our greenhouses:
A vermiculite mix containing Swirskii, Stratiolaelaps, and Dalotia is applied every three weeks. These are predatory mites and rove beetles that target thrips, fungus gnats, shore flies, and whitefly at multiple life stages — including the soil phase that pesticide sprays simply cannot reach.
Persimilis, a spider mite predator, is released one to two times per month. It works through the plant canopy with a precision that a spray application never could.
Aphidius colemani and ervi are parasitic wasps released twice a month for aphid control. These tiny wasps parasitize aphids directly, laying eggs inside them. Targeted, precise, and nothing left behind on the plant.
Orius, the pirate bug, is deployed as a hotspot treatment for thrips specifically on our pollinator plants. It has worked exceptionally well.
The Banker Plant Program
A clever approach to sustaining beneficial populations.
To sustain our populations of parasitic wasps between releases we grow banker plants. These are grasses inoculated with a specific aphid that only feeds on grasses and cannot spread to other plants in the greenhouse. They exist solely to feed and maintain our wasp populations, keeping them strong and active all season long.
It is a self sustaining living system. A tiny, invisible ecosystem working around the clock inside our greenhouses so that your plants arrive healthy, clean, and ready to do exactly what you planted them to do.
Why Biological Works Better
The safety benefits for our greenhouse and garden center workers alone is worth implementing this program but there is a performance argument for biological pest control that is hard to ignore.
Beneficial insects can crawl into the crevices, undersides, and growing points that spray applications miss entirely. They work continuously, not on a schedule. And unlike pesticides they do not become less effective over time.
That last point matters more than most people realize. I have personally watched resistance develop over my fifteen years in horticulture. Products that worked reliably early in my career work less reliably today. The industry responds by reaching for more applications and stronger chemistry, and the gap keeps widening. Biological control does not have this problem. A predatory mite does not stop working because the pest population has adapted to it.
The result is a higher quality plant. Grown cleaner, without the chemical load, and without the residuals that come with conventional production.
One More Thing — Your Plants Are Not Crawling With Bugs
We know what you might be thinking and we want to address it directly.
The beneficial insect populations required to maintain control are remarkably small. They work at a scale you will never see with the naked eye. You are not bringing home a plant covered in insects. You are bringing home a clean, healthy, blooming plant that was grown without pesticide residuals — because tiny invisible predators did the work instead.
The only insects you are likely to notice on our pollinator plants are the ones you planted them for.
Grown Clean, From the Ground Up
We complement our biological program with Berns 10-4-3, an all natural fertilizer that does not leave residual salts on soil or foliage. It is the same philosophy applied to nutrition — clean inputs, healthy plants, nothing left behind.
We are good stewards of our industry. We believe there is a place in the world for responsible pesticide use. But for plants going into pollinator gardens — plants that bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds will depend on — we made a choice. Our pollinator plants are grown without pesticides, supported by a biological program that we have refined over time. In fact, this pollinator program was one of our pilot programs testing this approach years ago as we began implementing this new approach to pest management.
When you plant a Berns pollinator plant, you are planting something that is truly safe for the garden you are trying to build.
Not every garden center can say that. We can.
Curious about the collection we grew this way? Read about our Pollinator Favorites.
And if you want to meet the team behind the program, join us Saturday June 7th at 11am at both our Beavercreek and Middletown locations for a free guided pollinator walkabout.