Pollinator Pathway wants to make food flourish

When Patricia Newkirk and Wendy Ferry started the Pollinator Pathway Northwest initiative, they were concerned about food—about one third of our food requires pollinators such as bees, butterflies, birds, bats, flies, wasps, moths or beetles to produce.

“We're already seeing food shortages, and we're already seeing droughts and so forth that are killing off different crops,” Ferry said. “If we don't protect our pollinators, we're going to be in a world of hurt.”

The three greatest threats to pollinators, Ferry said, are climate change, habitat loss and the use of harmful pesticides.

The initiative seeks to educate people about pollinator-friendly environments and help homeowners cultivate them in their own lawns and gardens. Ultimately, she said, they want to create a latitudinal “pathway” of pollinator-friendly zones along the migratory routes of these creatures.

“[Creatures] that are going north and south during summer and winter, birds and bees and butterflies and so forth, all need nectar. They all need places to live and safe harbors to raise their young,” Ferry said. “And they need more than just a garden here and another garden a thousand miles away.”

Pollinator Pathway Northwest recently partnered with a New England organization of the same name. Participants who pledge to create a pollinator garden can order a yard sign which shares the cause.

Ferry and Newkirk took over the pollinator garden at 21 Acres in early 2021, and officially started the initiative this year. They have also been giving bees and bee houses to local farmers for free.

At 21 Acres, they built what is called a Hugel mound, Newkirk said.

“You dig out a hole, and you pile in a whole lot of wood, brush, woody material. And then you pull the dirt back over that pile,” she said. “The wood absorbs a lot of water, and can actually reduce the amount of watering you have to do through the summer significantly. In some cases, you don't have to water at all, depending on what you're planting.”

Over time, organisms in the soil break down the woody material, trading it with the plants for sugar. This increases the complexity of the soil, the health of the plants and pollinators, and the nutritional value of the food they produce.

The practice also works in smaller gardens and even individual plant pots.

Another practice that Pollinator Pathway is promoting is the conversion of grass lawns into pollinator gardens through “lasagna gardening”, Newkirk said.

“It's better if you don't [get rid of the grass], if you just start layering on top of your grass,” she said. “You can start with twigs and newspaper, cardboard, and then on top of that put compost, and you can order wood chips from a company that works on trees. And just layer six to 12 inches of stuff on top of your lawn, and then let it sit for six to eight months. All of that grass gets broken down by the soil organisms and turned into rich soil for the plants.”

In the spring, pollinator plants can be planted on top of the soil. Over time, a garden lawn will begin to require less maintenance than grass lawns, Newkirk said.

“If you stay on top of the weeds early on as your pollinator plants grow and fill in the spaces, then it’s less and less work,” she said. “Of course, you don’t have to go out and mow every week, and you don’t have to use all those chemicals.”

Ferry also emphasized the importance of moving away from grass lawns to protect pollinators and the climate.

“When you think about what we do with our grass lawns, we tend to put fertilizer on in spring and in the fall, as well as weed killer,” she said. “We mow them, usually with a gas-powered motor, so we're polluting the air while we're mowing. And we're watering and watering and watering.”

As the effects of climate change intensify, more pollinators will suffer, which is why it’s vital that we act now to create more pollinator-friendly environments, Ferry said.

“Unfortunately, with climate change, things are blooming in and out of season. A lot of times they’ll bloom early, and our bees–our native bees especially–don’t come out early enough to hit the plants. So they’re off kilter a little bit at this point,” she said. “If they don’t have nectar, they can’t survive, and they die off, and they don’t produce young for next year.”

However, there are still many steps we can take to help pollinators at both the individual and civic level.

At pollinator-pathway.org, you can learn about simple actions you can take, like planting pollinator-friendly plants in your yard at your house or in a pot at your apartment, or bigger projects, like converting your grass lawn into a garden lawn.