Are you interested in supporting POLLINATORS wherever you live?
The Shelburne Falls Community Orchard and Community Gardens hope to participate in regional efforts to support native pollinators including bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, bats, and hummingbirds, that are considered “keystone species” in our ecosystem. Our ability to grow plants to support us, depends on the health of these allies.
You can start where you are.
Here are helpful links and information about obtaining plantings that attract and support pollinators:
- Locally, visit Wing and a Prayer Nursery in Cummington, MA to find an abundance of trees, native bushes, native pollinators and grasses ready to put in the ground. (To help choose plantings, ask Amy at the nursery) Link here
- Healthier Holm: Perennial Plants for Pollinators Chart
- UMASS extension: Pollinators in the Landscape
- Audubon Native Plants Database
You can build habitat.
The Shelburne Falls Community Orchard and Community Gardens hope to partner soon with local art students to build bat houses and hummingbird feeders to attract them to our gardens and orchard. You can join us and build welcoming homes/habitat in your own yard.
You can be part of the movement.
To find out more about regional efforts to create a safe “pollinator corridor” through the valley see the “Regional Pollinator Action Plan” (https://frcog.org/franklin-county-regional-pollinator-plan/) developed with funding provided by an Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) Planning grant, the FRCOG worked with the towns of Greenfield, Heath, Shelburne, Conway, Bernardston, Montague, Wendell, and Orange to develop a Regional Pollinator Action Plan. The project created a map of pollinator habitats and potential connections, with recommendations for ways that communities can better support pollinator habitats through native plantings and pollinator-friendly landscape management practices.
You can certify your pollinator garden.
Sign up to be one of the “1001 Pollinator Gardens” in western Massachusetts.