The Secret Ingredient Your Soil Has Been Waiting For: A Partnership with Bloom

The process for creating a pollinator friendly garden space has been the same throughout the history of DC Natives. It boils down to selecting the proper site that best suits the garden, preparing that space to give the young native plants a fighting chance for survival, adding compost or soil amendments to add nutrients to aid in growth, installing the native plants, adding irrigation or a soaker system to maintain consistent watering, adding newspaper or cardboard to suppress weeds, and finally adding mulch to help keep moisture close to the roots where the plants need it most. You can click the link to read about the process to create a native plant pollinator habitat in more detail.

We have noticed from feedback that the “adding compost or soil amendments” portion of the process can be a little challenging for new gardeners, when we ask gardeners to go to the Fort Totten Solid Waste Disposal Transfer Station in Northeast DC. Since there is usually quite a high demand for free compost at Fort Totten, we’ve heard that sometimes Fort Totten is out of compost. We understand how frustrating that may be especially if someone has driven up to Fort Totten only to be turned away.

Part of DC Natives’ mission is to create more pollinator habitats, especially in wards seven and eight. We completed exhaustive research over the past few seasons to find a way to reduce the barriers gardeners have to getting a pollinator garden installed by DC Natives. Obtaining compost or soil amendments has proven to be one of the more intense barriers from a time, labor, and cost perspective.

In steps Bloom, DC Water’s high-performing compost alternative recycled from local wastewater. By using Bloom’s soil amendment and growing space in their Blue Plains greenhouse, our partnership helps to build healthier, more beautiful habitats for both DC residents and our vital pollinators.

It may not look like much, but this heap of Bloom soil amendment helped assist DC Natives and DC Natives’ gardeners with installing 40-50 gardens including gardens installed through our First Flower Friday‘s summer social and the fabulous Spring demonstration garden series.

We are extremely thankful for the partnership with Bloom to help reduce one of the barriers our gardeners face in their journey in building a beautiful pollinator habitat with the help of DC Natives.

If you are interested in learning more about Bloom or possibly signing up to tour the facility to ask more questions, please visit Bloom’s website or by emailing bloom@bloomsoil.com.