Vision

We wanted to create a peaceful and relaxing pollinator garden that would benefit bees and butterflies, as well as any students or community members who would like a space outside to enjoy nature.

Action

We decided to enhance our garden on our school and make it a pollinator garden. We tried to plant wildflowers last year, however the wild gophers ate all of our seedlings. We don’t think the bees and butterflies had much to enjoy. This year we contacted Wild About Flowers and inquired about “gopher proof” plants that we could use. Wild About Flowers specializes in native plants to our area, and it was also important to us that we planted native species that could thrive here. We decided to plant nodding onion, wild chives, wild mint, and wooly cinquefoil. These plants are not only native species, they are beneficial to pollinators! We understand that nothing can grow – flowers for beauty, crops for food, trees – without pollinators. We wanted to create a garden for pollinators as we know they are endanger because of habitat loss and plants like dandelions being sprayed with herbicides. The next step was to provide habitat for some pollinators, mason bees. An expert in our local community came into Leadership class and taught us all about mason bees and the their importance to our ecosystem. She provided us with a bee house for mason bees, with several rods to actually provide housing for several bees. We also received some mason bee cocoons. We are going to release them into their bee house. This will ensure that we have pollinators already to take advantage of our pollinator garden! Students understand that providing these on our school grounds will actually benefit our town.

Reflection & Celebration

We are so proud of this tiny space, and cannot wait to see how other CMJHS students use it and build it up!