The Garden Ecology Lab engages in research that aims to inform sustainable gardening practices in the Pacific Northwest. Some of our research is conducted as controlled field trials at Oregon State University-owned research sites. Other research projects occur in community and private gardens, across the state. We also use surveys to better understand how gardeners perceive different aspects of a garden ecosystem.
The questions we seek to answer with our research are guided by interests and expertise of Garden Ecology Lab members, but are also informed by the questions that gardeners ask us, the online chatter we see in online gardening groups, and the responses we receive on surveys. Our work thus occurs in close partnership with Oregon’s gardeners and gardening communities. Because of this, we are committed to sharing the results of our research with the general public, in a format that is engaging and useful to gardeners.
This is why we created the Garden Ecology Lab Briefs, or GEL Briefs. GEL Briefs are short, free-to-use 2-page documents that can be downloaded, printed, and used as handouts at a retail nursery, community garden fair, public talk or presentation, plant sale, or other event.
Each Brief includes a visually-engaging infographic, and text that provides a summary of our research, results, and how you can apply the research findings in your garden. The seven NEW briefs that we have just published are mostly drawn from our research on pollinators’ use of native plants and native cultivars.
We provide an overview of pollinator visitation (abundance) and pollinator richness (# of unique species) on native plants and their cultivars. Pollinator visitation and richness were generally depressed on native cultivars, compared to native plants. In only one instance (Douglas’ Aster ‘Sauvie Star’) were pollinators significantly more abundant and as species rich as the native counterpart.

You may notice that the ‘Sauvie Snow’ cultivar had as many pollinator species as the native (29 pollinator species, each) and significantly more pollinator visits than the native. The ‘Sauvie Star’ cultivar had almost as many pollinator species, and more (but not significantly different, statistically) pollinator visits than the native. We think that there are two possible explanations for these results. First, the ‘Sauvie Snow’ and ‘Sauvie Star’ cultivars represent naturally occurring, regional variants of the native. They thus represent forms of the plant that pollinators may encounter (albeit rarely) in nature. Second, the ‘Sauvie Star’ and ‘Sauvie Snow’ cultivars had as many flowers as the native, but since these plants were taller, the flowers were more spread out along a vertical axis. This may provide pollinators more space to forage, which could have reduced competition for floral resources.

We also provide data that shows how the act of breeding a native plant, to create a native cultivar, can have unintended impacts on floral resources for pollinators. Drawing from our data for California Poppy and Farewell-to-Spring, we show that pollen lipid (fat) content, pollen protein content, can sometimes be increased or decreased in native cultivars, relative to the native plant. California poppy does not produce nectar, so we only provide nectar data for farewell-to-spring. Although nectar volume is unchanged between the native and its cultivars, nectar sugar content is decreased in the ‘Dwarf White’ native cultivar, relative to the native plant.

The infographic from the Garden Ecology Lab Brief entitled ‘Breeding Native Plants has Ecological Trade-Offs‘
We share data on what surveyed gardeners thought of the aesthetic appeal of native plants versus cultivars. Note that these survey results were heavily influenced by the fact that most of the respondents identified as native plant gardeners. But somewhat unexpectedly, since native plant breeding is often focused on improving aesthetic appeal, we found that gardeners almost always preferred the aesthetics of the native plant. Only yarrow ‘Salmon Beauty’ had a comparable aesthetic score to its native plant counterpart.

We also share data from some of the unexpected and unplanned aspects of this study. For example, we formalized our observations of gopher preferences for Camas bulb cultivars into a Garden Ecology Lab Brief. We also did more reading, and found out that Camas ‘Blue Heaven’ are likely avoided by bulb predators, because this cultivar contains Camassia cusickii, and this bulb is inedible, due to its bitter saponin chemicals.

Another unplanned aspect of the native plant and native cultivar study was how hard it was to find native plants and native cultivars that were representative of the native plants in our region. We decided to share our experience in a GEL Brief about how difficult it can be to determine native plant status. We also wrote two guides to help gardeners decipher plant labels and find and buy native plants.

Finally, we created an infographic that communicates what gardeners think about native plant aesthetics, and how brief messages about the pollinators that are supported by an ‘ugly’ native plant can help improve a plant’s appeal. This brief highlights what our lab has long called the ‘ecological beauty’ of a plant. Beauty can indeed go beyond surface appearance, and can also include the beauty of the different pollinators that a plant brings to your garden.

We hope that you find these Briefs interesting and useful. If you have a gardening event or other venue where they might be useful, we hope that you will consider printing them out for distribution. They are free to use and share. We also hope that you will check back to the resource page that our lab has set up, specifically to community our research findings with gardeners. We have two new briefs in preparation, based upon a new study of syrphid flies in garden spaces.
Finally, we would like to highlight and thank several people and organizations that have helped to make these briefs possible.
- The idea behind the Garden Ecology Lab Briefs first came from Sherry Sheng.
- Funding for the Briefs came from a Clackamas County Master Gardener Association Gray and Norrene Thompson Community Projects grant, and donations to the Garden Ecology League and Garden Ecology Circle.
- The 10-Minute UniversityTM team reviews each brief for clarity.
- Jen Hayes does the bulk of the content development and design for each brief.