Watch pollinator habitat grow like a weed

The Coal Creek Pollinator District grows garden by garden at the Earth Day Everyday celebration in Lafayette. Image by Amy Droitcour

What if every garden had native plants in it? What if your garden did?

We asked everyone who stopped at our tables at Lafayette and Erie’s Earth Day celebrations last weekend to put their garden on the map to demonstrate how quickly we could grow the Coal Creek Pollinator District among existing gardens.

Gardens are part of the suburban ideal these days, but stands of useful plants have graced our dwellings since time immemorial, starting with crop plants, medicinal plants and moving onto plants that show our taste, worldliness or, as in turf grass, our status.

Turf grass rose as a marker of wealth — the property owner being wealthy enough that they didn’t need to crop their land, and then the property being indeed so fabulously wealthy they didn’t need to graze it, either, but could afford to simply cut and waste its nutrition.

The contents of our gardens has always been a sign of the times. So what does your garden say about you?

Are you growing crops this year to offset your grocery bill? Are you growing standard ornamentals because everyone else does? What about native plants?

These times are tough for our pollinators. Reports earlier this month detail another mass die-off among bees, with pesticide use and habitat loss as the likely culprits once again. Those problems seem really big, but they are no larger than your garden.

Gardens connect in Erie during its Earth Day celebration. Image by Casey Lyons

By incorporating native plants into your landscape, you can convert not only your own yard into pollinator habitat, but the yards of your neighbors too. On our map, each sticker or blue dot represents a 400-foot-radius circle, which approximates the average flight distance of a native bee. Our bees are so local, they live their whole lives in a neighborhood.

Where habitat circles overlap, the habitat connects, meaning any bee that finds itself in that area can find something to eat. Our native plants are beautiful, low-maintenance and define the floral identity of this place, here, not just any place. Putting them in your garden demonstrates that you care about place, the constellation of lives around you and that you fit here, instead of making here fit you.

Getting started is as easy as filling out our form to certify your habitat. We’ll help with the rest.

The Coal Creek Pollinator District grows one garden at a time. Make yours count.