Pollinator Patch - The Roadside Edition

Are you feeling energetic and motivated to help pollinators in your area? Here’s one way to make pollinator patches: Carol Dunk has helped the Ontario government develop a program to improve pollinator habitat on public land, and prepared this handy booklet called Roadsides for your reference! Roadsides is a program that encourages you to create habitat for native bees and other pollinators along roadsides, on cloverleafs, on unused urban land and in your garden. The little habitats created by volunteers like you are called Pollinator Patches.

Roadsides takes advantage of the land that the Ministry of Transportation owns, and with one little patch at a time, turns it into thriving plants that pollinators love! It provides what all pollinators need: a variety of floral nutrition throughout the growing season, from early spring to late autumn. You can use Pollination Canada’s handy online booklet as a springboard, to help you select appropriate plants. There are other references within the booklet, as well as on our homepage, to help you hone in on the best plants for your area of the country.

Although Carol worked with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation to create a template that we can follow, perhaps you can work with the Transportation Ministry in your province to create a similar program!

Carol won the 2012  Pollinator Advocate Award for Canada last year, at the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign conference in Washington, DC.

You can follow Carol’s wise wit on her website and via twitter @caroldunk

Back to December 2013 Newsletter