Helping save pollinators
one garden at a time

Bee the Change assists towns in creating habitat for endangered bees and butterflies

By Irwin Rapoport

September 7, 2022

On July 23, at Vergennes Falls Park in the City of Vergennes, VT, Bee the Change held the Grand Opening of a new pollinator garden as part of its Our Town Pollinator Project, which seeks to create habitat for pollinators including endangered bumble bees and Monarch butterflies in Vermont’s cities and towns.

According to the Addison Independent, a large crowd attended the opening of this new half-acre pollinator garden, which celebrated pollinators and had Bee the Change staff and volunteers on hand to answer questions and spread the word about why it is critical to protect pollinators, preserve existing habitats, and create new habitats for them to survive and flourish.

“We are actually in the process of working in fifteen different towns with ten more in the pipeline,” said Mike Kiernan, a co-founder of Bee the Change, emergency room doctor, and committed environmentalist. “We work to support pollinators across the thousands of species who play that role. We formally launched the Our Town Pollinator Project for Pollinator Week last June. Our goal is for every town in Vermont to eventually have one of these habitats.”

Mike and Tawnya Kiernan – Image: Bee the Change

Kiernan co-founded the group with his wife Tawnya, its CEO. So, if a small city in Vermont can set aside land for a significantly sized pollinator garden, why don’t we have similar-sized gardens at hundreds of parks in the Greater Montreal Area and throughout southern Quebec? And secondly, not just for medium and large parks, but smaller ones where 12-foot by 12-foot pollinator gardens can be established. Additionally, why not plant pollinator gardens along the borders of parks and in other green spaces owned by municipalities, universities, and companies? And why don’t we bring in programs to have homeowners and owners of apartment buildings and condo towers establish pollinator gardens?

We can seriously help our pollinators and Monarch butterflies, which are in serious decline and have now been officially declared as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on July 21 of this year.

Many species of insects are now witnessing serious reductions in numbers. This is disastrous as they not only serve as pollinators but are an important food source for birds, bats, and many mammals. All forms of life on Earth are dependent upon insects, and to lose them impacts and harms everyone.

This February 2019 article in The Guardian discusses the collapse of insect populations and this Wikipedia page provides excellent background on ongoing research in the field. An NPR interview with environmental reporter and author Oliver Millman is extremely informative. Millman recently launched his new book, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, and it perfectly and fully explains the disaster unrolling before our eyes and, for the most part, not being addressed.

… if a small city in Vermont can set aside land for a significantly sized pollinator garden, why don’t we have similar-sized gardens at hundreds of parks in the Greater Montreal Area and throughout southern Quebec?

Here are some facts concerning the pollinator garden in Vergennes. It is nearly half an acre in size and attracts many species of insects, birds, mammals and reptiles such as snakes which can establish homes in the habitat and have a reliable food source. The garden was placed on a lawn that was regularly mowed and essentially a dead zone for life, as are most fields consisting solely of grass.

The city permitted Bee the Change to plant the garden with many types of vegetation including milkweed where Monarchs lay their eggs. The caterpillars eat the leaves to secure the toxins that protect them from predators. Following the feeding period, they create silk cocoons for the chrysalis stage of their life when they transform into a butterfly. The garden has a path that allows visitors to see pollinators at work and as part of its educational mission, there are signs explaining why pollinators and the plants they depend upon are critical and should be cherished.

Moreover, the garden, full of mature plants, does not have to be watered. The native perennials look after themselves as long as we leave them alone to flourish.

Bird’s eye view of pollinator garden – Image: Spencer Media

Patrick Kitchen, Bee the Change‘s Director of Operations & Marketing, spoke with Westmount Magazine on how the park was created and its role.

WM: How long did it take to convince Vergennes to agree to the initiative and set aside the land for the pollinator garden? What was the key to getting them to say “yes,” and will they permit other parks to host similar gardens?

Kitchen: One of the many reasons I love the great state of Vermont is how much people are willing to help each other out and the City of Vergennes is no exception to this attribute. However, a woman named Erin Wolcott was a tremendous help in getting Vergennes to say “yes,” as she did a lot of the research needed to get her select board to agree to the project, with seeing if we would need a zoning permit and an archeological assessment. Creating an easy-to-understand slideshow for them to interpret was all thanks to her.

‘… there are so many public areas in towns that maybe need a ‘revamp,’ or are currently unused by people that are just perfect opportunities to create habitat and attract community members to visit and educate themselves on the pollinators.’

– Patrick Kitchen, Director of Operations & Marketing, Bee the Change

Once you put the word out of what you’re offering a town, there are people immediately on your side who already understand the importance of what you’re doing and will advocate for you and help you along with it. Then you and whoever is already on your side can focus on any questions from people who have a hard time seeing the bigger picture.

But there are so many public areas in towns that maybe need a ‘revamp,’ or are currently unused by people that are just perfect opportunities to create habitat and attract community members to visit and educate themselves on the pollinators. Then, the hope is people will be able to see this change in species at their town plot they’ve occupied for however long and rethink what they’re doing in their other town plots, at their place of business, and around their own home.

Pollinator garden in a solar field – Image: Bee the Change

WM: Once you had the site, how long did it take to create the garden? What went into the planning, and did it require the help of volunteers to plant the seeds and transplant mature plants? And how long did it take for the garden to establish itself and what was involved?

Kitchen: We begin by tilling the area on average about three times to try out the sod and kill the competitive grass currently growing there – this is a quick and dirty way to get rid of the sod. Other methods that can work are cutting out the sod directly either with a tool or machine, which is very effective but more labour intensive, or covering it with a tarp for the season so nothing is exposed to the sun.

Then, seeding a mix of our pollinator mix as well as a cover crop. Cover crops grow in quickly, so they offer some shade to the pollinator seeds and the soil and allow more moisture to be retained, but they won’t persist in the area. Then, also doing a bit of hand planting, which allows for larger flowering plants in the first/second year of installation. I would say, from start to finish, it took roughly two months to get to what you see now. In its current status, it is mainly buckwheat, a cover crop for our mix, that does also attract a lot of pollinators. There are also a lot of flowers coming up underneath and others that have been hand planted that won’t bloom until next year.

‘… we are creating a more connected landscape for pollinators to thrive, for Monarchs and hummingbirds to fulfil their long migration, and for animals to use the habitat they once knew and loved, and need more than ever.’

– Patrick Kitchen, Director of Operations & Marketing, Bee the Change

WM: With the Vergennes garden established, have you received requests from other municipalities and counties to create similar gardens?

Kitchen: As people throughout Vermont hear about Our Town Pollinator Project, a lot of attraction comes our way either through word of mouth, different ads or from seeing our newly installed gardens. We get a lot of people contacting us and telling us about their interest and seeing what the next steps can be to get a garden installed in their town. But also just people wanting to know what they can do themselves to bring pollinators, which is always so exciting to hear – somebody wanting to learn what things they can do to help pollinators is music to my ears.

WM: Why is it important to have as many pollinator gardens as possible, and how can they make a difference?

Kitchen: Humans as a species have crowded out a lot of other species that would normally be thriving where we currently exist. By creating expansive farmland, power lines and neighbourhoods, we are choosing to use the land for us instead of it normally being a large meadow, marshland, or more forestland.

Some people believe that we can have areas (like Vermont’s expansive forests) be the sole habitat for wildlife but Bee the Change is working to create areas where we can all share the land instead of spare it. We are putting habitat in our solar fields, town parks, and backyards. By doing this, we are creating a more connected landscape for pollinators to thrive, for Monarchs and hummingbirds to fulfil their long migration, and for animals to use the habitat they once knew and loved, and need more than ever.

WM: Could you describe how the pollinator garden will help educate people about pollinators and serve as a living laboratory for students of all ages?

Kitchen: The phrase “seeing is believing” can’t be truer than with pollinator habitat. When you plant things native to your area, it is remarkable how many native pollinators then become attracted to it and feed off the nectar. Whether it is mountain mint, Joe-Pye weed, or milkweed, I have had so many personal experiences seeing numerous wasps, flies, bees, and butterflies feeding on these plants.

In our town sites, we are also implementing educational signage for people to read and learn what natural processes are going on right in front of them. We tend to create paths through our gardens so that people may have flowers and pollinators fully surrounding them and they can then be fully immersed in pollinators.

WM: How serious is the decline of insects in the New England and southern Quebec area, and what will happen if we don’t act?

Kitchen: We have 17 different bumblebee species in our region. Twenty-five years ago, we had all 17. Now we are down to ten. Of those seven that are endangered, four of them are gone. At a normal rate, if we lost one bumblebee twenty-five years ago, we wouldn’t lose the fourth until the year 3400. Let that one sink in.

‘… I became very interested in pollinators as well as landscape design through pollinator habitat and just overall how important their existence really is. They are a keystone species, which means without them, the entire ecosystem would collapse.’

– Patrick Kitchen, Director of Operations & Marketing, Bee the Change

Bumblebees aren’t only an essential pollinator in nature, they’re an extremely important one in our society. Everyone knows them and loves them in the bee kingdom as being the big teddy bears of bees. Now imagine seeing less and less of them to the point of not seeing them at all, as well as not receiving their extremely important services of pollinating so many of our native flowers and crops.

WM: What brought you to Bee the Change, and why are you concerned about the environment and biodiversity?

Kitchen: During my undergrad, I became very interested in pollinators as well as landscape design through pollinator habitat and just overall how important their existence really is. They are a keystone species, which means without them, the entire ecosystem would collapse. So yes, the environment and its biodiversity are a concern for me.

With climate change, organisms are beginning to move north and exist in parts of the world they never existed in before, so we need to make sure they have the food and nesting habitat necessary to live and persist with this rapidly changing climate. We need to stop trying to push them out from where we live and instead allow them to live and coexist with us because without them, we won’t be able to exist in our habitat.