On May 6th, we broke ground on out pollinator habitat, funded by AWS InCommunities Northern Viriginia Sustainability Fund. The project is too new to have helped pollinators, but has already had huge community involvement and educational value. Additional funds will allow us to hold a second community planting day in the early fall and maintain the current plot.
Our project drew over 100 volunteers for our planting workday. The project included neighbors of all ages and walks of life, from retirees to elementary school Girls Scouts. Approximately 75 of the volunteers were students from the local high school. Knowing that many students were registered to participate, many of the biology teachers took time in class to explain the project and its importance for the local ecosystem. The large number of volunteers allowed us to remove huge quantities of invasive garlic mustard from Horsepen Run, which will improve the ecological health of the area surrounding our project site.
Three advanced Girls Scouts worked on the project for their Silver Award. They spent many hours of research and work developing bee houses, which will shelter native solitary bees while our pollinator garden matures. It will eventually provide natural solitary bee nesting sites in the form of old hollow flower stems. These scouts are also working on an official website for the project, which will enhance the educational value and provide a mechanism for recruitment of new volunteers for long-term care and maintenance of the pollinator habitat. Additionally, we started a social media site for the project, for the sake of advertising planting events and sharing science-backed information with the community (https://www.facebook.com/hprpollinatorhabitat/). The social media site is maintained by an entomologist who resides in the neighborhood.
We used our funding to purchase ecotype-specific plants native to our county, educational signage, and supplies for marking, clearing, and protecting the habitat site (ex. small flags, sod cutter rental, mulch, deer netting, and watering backpacks). Our generous budget allowed us to buy 16 species of native perennials, allowing us to achieve our goals of supporting a variety of pollinators through different bloom shapes, colors and seasons and many known butterfly and moth caterpillar host plants. We were also able to purchase a custom sign for our habitat, which was an important part of reaching our educational value goal. The sign explains the project to passing neighbors, provides tips for supporting pollinators at home, and connects neighbors to our social media so that they can learn more and get involved.
Saturday's planting workday was a fantastic success. We had 98 volunteers sign in. Not only did we complete all of the needed work carefully and ahead of schedule, but we were also able to improve the ecological quality of HPR by removing hundreds of pounds of invasive garlic mustard. This means that in addition to our deliberate planting of native wildflowers, we also opened up large amounts of forest real estate for other native plants to take over.
We hope you will stop by this summer to watch it grow!
Sign up to maintain our new habitat:
https://forms.gle/LWFdTjYj14UdTFej6
We are on Facebook! Visit our page to see progress updates, articles about native plant gardening, and to post your own creature sightings at Horsepen Run
I received an email today from the Proprietary with the April Countryside Courier/newsletter. There's a nice write up by Alys on this project, on page 7. Great job, Alys!
Camille and I have two gallon size bags of Milkweed seeds that we will happily contribute. Let us know.
Hrm a lot of people are offering seeds and plants. We are getting restoration-grade ecotype specific plants and organizing them into a natural community. I don’t think we can easily add in donations. Is anyone interested in having a plant/seed swap event?
I also have some native seeds from a neighbor that I haven't gotten around to planting that I'd be happy to pass along. I've got an inventory sheet I would be happy to send you.
Two gallons!!! I’ll have to think about how to leverage a resource like that.
Good news! Our funding has been approved. We also received some matching funds from Earth Sangha wild plant nursery and are gearing up for an exciting spring. Stay tuned for info about planting workdays (likely held in early May). If you want to attend the next planning meeting, but have not been receiving emails from me, send me a message with your email address.
Hang in there team! We are waiting for ChangeX to check our work. We will hopefully let you know very soon if we’ve been approved
