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You have to Connect to Protect!

The buzz surrounding our declining pollinators keeps getting louder and louder. The recently developed UGA Public Service and Outreach program, Connect to Protect, joins the Greater Atlanta Pollinator Partnership (GAPP) in spreading the word about the loss of our native insect diversity and providing ways to get involved. Like GAPP, Connect to Protect focuses on the opportunity that our urban areas provide for constructing pollinator habitats. The idea is to create a connected network of beautifully designed and ecologically minded landscapes within our communities. Using native plants in our landscapes acknowledges the coevolutionary relationships that have developed among plants and their insect partners over thousands of years. As a result of these partnerships, many insects have high specificity to breed or feed only on particular native plant species or families. Increasing the diversity within our landscapes can create dramatic expressions of color and texture while providing resources for wildlife. The hope is to create corridors of native plant gardens through our urban environments.

Education is the other crucial piece of the pollinator conservation puzzle. What better way to ensure a future for our ecologically crucial insects than to teach children about the fantastic world of pollination biology? Connect to Protect organizes hands-on educational programs for elementary-aged children to learn in an informal environment while getting their hands dirty. Planting pollinator gardens at schools creates accountability with garden maintenance while providing an introduction into the various career paths that biological science offers. Installation of native gardens, coupled with education programs ensures that our communities are aware of the plight of pollinators and have ways to get involved that are both fun and ecologically beneficial.

This is a call to arms! Getting involved in conservation does not require a degree in biology, nor does it require large tracts of land. We can no longer rely solely on our dwindling wildlands to support insect and plant diversity. Small pockets of native plants have the power to transform our neighborhoods into ecological havens and change the way people think about our landscapes. By focusing on the inextricable relationship between plants and pollinators, the Connect to Protect program advocates for increasing both plant and insect diversity in our expanding urban areas.

Visit the State Botanical Garden in Athens, Georgia for the Connect to Protect Native Plant Sale. A variety of native wildflowers, grasses, and forbs will be for sale on October 6th, 7th, and 8th and October 13th, 14th, 15th.

Get involved, plant a garden, and spread the word!

Guest Blog written by: Lauren Muller, UGA College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. M.S. Candidate, Horticulture

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Buzz Flash Hive Mind

Urban pollinator parks – Vine City Park.

Standing in the shadow of Mercedez Benz Stadium in Atlanta is the newly renovated Vine City Park. A greenspace project for the Vine City community, planned and constructed by the Conservation fundPark PrideCity of Atlanta, Invest Atlanta, The Arthur Blank FoundationAtlanta Botanical Garden and many other volunteers and organizations. Almost 10 years in the making this space brings a much needed park to an urban space that was once blighted by abandoned houses, and overrun with kudzu.

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Two acre plot in 2004 where the Vine City Park now stands. Photo Credit: Park Pride

The new park provides the local community with a much needed play space, and an area to enjoy the natural environment. The Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG) has installed three pollinator beds at the park, which have been maintained and are monitored for pollinator abundance and biodiversity. It is the hope of ABG and GAPP that urban pollinator gardens such as Vine City and Lindsay Street Park will become important links in a greenway that stretches across metro Atlanta to connect pollinators to their habitats.

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The Atlanta Botanical Garden team monitors pollinator diversity and abundance at Vine City Park

 

Co-blogged by GAPP + Jataysia Daniels, Greening Youth Foundation & Atlanta Botanical Garden Conservation Intern!

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Buzz Flash Hive Mind

Pollination with a purpose. Lindsay Street Park

Lindsay Street Park has had quite a transformation. This is the first park in English Avenue, a historic Atlanta neighborhood which is currently undergoing a large number of innovative community projects to revitalize the area. The renovation of the park was led by the Conservation Fund, with help from partners Trees Atlanta, Park Pride,  Atlanta Botanical Gardens, members of the English Avenue Community, and many other organizations and volunteers.

However this park is so much more than a pollinator garden, it’s a park with a purpose. Lindsay Street Park functions as an important place for the local community to gather and appreciate nature, in a neighborhood that is devoid of friendly green space. The park also serves to combat storm water runoff, and mitigate water pollution, issues that have been prevalent in the aging neighborhood.

Community members and project collaborators have been quick to comment on the importance of the Lindsay Street Park restoration, and the clear benefits it provides  to the English Avenue neighborhood. Greening Youth Foundation’s Whitney Jaye remarks that “we need green space and community input , to improve mental, physical and emotional health”.  Tony Torrence founder and CEO of the Atlanta Community Improvement Association  has also commented on the history of the neighborhood, the importance of the parks restoration, and its link to the local peoples culture and identity. Torrence remarks, “People used to be baptized in this creek, and now it is polluted”.

The park  aims to mitigate the amount of storm water runoff that reaches the Proctor Creek Watershed through rain garden plantings, implementation of a bioswale, and decreasing the amount of impervious surfaces present in the community.

The Lindsay Street Park success story hinges on the commitment of dedicated partners, and participation by the local community members, to build a truly exceptional green space that will benefit both pollinators and humans!

 

 

Photo L: Tony Torrence displaying a piece of history; a brick found on site made at the Chattahoochee Brick Company which often used forced convict labour to produce over 200,000 bricks a day. Images courtesy of Whitney Flanagan, Dr. Jennifer Cruse Sanders

Photo R: Dr. Jennifer Cruse Sanders from the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Greening Youth Foundation interns and employees Whitney Jaye, Alagia Felix, Micheal Hendrix, Cristha  Edwards, Idalis Boyd, and Jataysia Daniels plant milkweed in Lindsay Street Park’s pollinator garden. Images courtesy of Whitney Flanagan, Dr. Jennifer Cruse Sanders

 

Co-blogged by GAPP + Jataysia Daniels, Greening Youth Foundation & Atlanta Botanical Garden Conservation Intern!

 

 

 

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Connect to Protect. A Partner update!

Our proud partners at Connect to Protect have been working hard in Macon! Today we are showcasing their commitment to native pollinators  with a project update from Jennifer Ceska, Conservation Coordinator at the State Botanic Garden of Georgia. Connect to Protect is a program piloted by the Garden to connect the dots for wildlife by providing food, shelter, and breeding locations across Georgia. This includes building habitat for native pollinators! For a video documenting their recent efforts click here

– GAPP TEAM

PARTNER UPDATE- Connect to Protect Goes to Macon! 

Written by:  Jennifer Ceska, Conservation Coordinator, SBG-Athens,

What an amazing series of connected dots! This project, providing native plants to gardens and schools, launched in Athens a couple of years ago. The goal is to help all incorporate natives into every garden, from patio pots to mailbox gardens, to pocket prairies in urban yards. We help to provide Georgia sourced seeds of these natives, select plants that are pretty for gardens and also support pollinators in all of their life stages, through all seasons. We donate plants to schools and sell them to others as well.

 And then we get a call from our State Botanical Garden of Georgia Chairman of the Board, Stephen Reichart, and his brother, the Mayor of Macon, Robert Reichard, saying they would like to create several Connect to Protect native plant gardens in Macon. About six months later, the plants are in the ground, being planted by a team of partners from Macon-Bibb Parks and Recreation and the State Botanical Garden. The response from this garden planting has been tremendous, with inquiries from all around the state with folks looking for ways to participate. We have been linking people with recommended species and native plant nurseries when they are far from Athens. We see Connect to Protect as a statewide program, and we recommend plants appropriate for each physiographic province in Georgia.

Connect to Protect connects the dots for wildlife by providing food, shelter, breeding locations for Georgia wildlife. Specifically, insect pollinators, most of whom require native plants to complete their life cycles and songbirds who feed their nestlings insects found on these Georgia native plants. Each Connect to Protect garden also incorporates Asclepias species, for supporting migrating Monarchs. You too can Connect to Protect. Contact the State Botanical Garden of Georgia for information, http://botgarden.uga.edu/.

 Connect to Protect is a proud partner of the Greater Atlanta Pollinator Partnership. Connect to Protect is a program piloted by the State Botanical Garden of Georgia meeting our mission of UGA’s Public Service and Outreach.


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Hive Mind

Why pollinator gardens are vital to urban landscapes.

Watch Sarah Bergmann creator of Pollinator Pathways, talk about designing “biodiversity back in” by creating linked pollinator habitats that form urban green space corridors.

Beginning with a single pollinator pathway project in Seattle, Bergmann has taken the model and created a visionary plan to involve strengthening and reconnecting fragmented green spaces in urban landscapes across the nation.

You can learn more about the original pollinator habitat project in Seattle, and also about her plans to adapt this model in other urban areas across the globe in the Ted Talk below.

Wanna hear more about this? Visit her website here: www.pollinatorpathway.com