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Every summer does it seem like you are 'ha-chooing' and sneezing the whole time?
Well maybe as a gardener you are really wondering what plants should I have in my garden
and what plants shouldn't I have in my garden.
Well the first thing we have to think about when it comes to having allergies is the
fact that usually, for most people, it's going to be the pollen from plants. Now the one
thing to keep in mind is, the pollen that usually causes people the really big
problems are those plants that have wind pollination. And that would be something
like ragweed, our friend here ragweed. This is, you can see on a plant like this,
it has very sort of indistinct flowers, you don't really noticed them all that
much.
Because these are wind pollinated. It doesn't need an fancy flower, it's not looking
for an insect. So these are the types of plants, they throw pollen to the wind,
and that's the kind of stuff that ends up
up our nose, and that's when we have allergies. So it's those wind pollinated plants that are going to
cause the most allergies. Now for a lot of our plants here at these are all
insect pollinated.
And we can tell they're insect pollinated because they have bright, showy flowers. They're trying
to attract and insect, so they want to be noticed.
So these are the ones we're really not going to have the problems with when it comes
to allergies. Unless you stick your nose clear up in it, I suppose it might be a
problem.
So even things like goldenrod, which I think a lot of times people think it's
going to be a problem for them, really isn't. Goldenrod, again,
bright, showy flower, it's insect pollinated, it's not going to be the type of plant that's really
going to cause you problems. So generally people are going to have problems with
anything that wind pollinated. That'd be things like grasses and also a lot of
our trees, unfortunately. Things like oaks, pines, spruces, a lot of those are wind
pollinated and those are the types of plants that are going to throw
pollen to the wind, and that's when we really have those allergy problems. So keep
it in mind when it comes to selecting some plants.