As a community garden, our main mission has been to garden responsibly as a community while serving our neighbors with donations to the food pantry. We hope to manage our garden in a sustainable manner to preserve and improve the soil conditions.
Many of our crops require pollination, and while we have never noticed a shortage of pollinators at work amoung our plants, we also want to provide attraction to pollinating insects such as wasps, bees and butterflies. As more and more land is gobbled up by developors, more of wild flowers that they depend on become more scarce.
Several years ago we purchased one Asclepius Tuberosa because it had been designated as a "pollinator of the year." Now that plant has reproduced itself through the seeds it formed, and we have learned how to save and replant the seeds successfully so that we now have about ten or so of them.
An advantage of Asclepius Tuberosa over the swamp milkweed is that it has a tuberous root and so it is easy to keep it where you want it, wheras the other variety puts out many runners and can be difficult to contain. As a wildflower, it is somewhat drought tolerant and is not easily overwhelmed by nearby weeds.