Submitted by Rotary Club of Bedford
Residents are invited to join the Rotary Club of Bedford at 1 p.m. on Saturday as they populate their Pollination Preservation Garden. You will find the Garden at 151 The Great Road, just behind Memorial Park. It’s part of Bedford Rotary’s effort to promote native pollination systems that provide specific habitats and reduce threats for at-risk pollinators, such as native bumblebees.
Pre-register at the club’s website: https://bedfordmarotary.org/event/pollinator-garden–planting/
With pollinators in decline across the globe, the Rotary Club of Bedford determined that creating a community pollination garden would be a step in mitigating the problem. The project has been guided by the work of the Metrowest Conservation Alliance’s Bumble Bee Project which is based on UMass Dartmouth Professor Dr. Robert Gegear’s research into the conservation of at-risk native bumble bees.
Rotary’s first steps in creating and making the native Pollination Preservation Garden a reality involved securing land use permission from the Town of Bedford. Working with the DPW and the Conservation Commission, the site at 151 The Great Road was approved.
In the fall of 2022, the club started work to prepare the garden bed. The DPW mowed the site, and then the entire area was smothered with corrugated cardboard covered with wood chips. That was the non-chemical way of killing weeds and other non-native, invasive vegetation.
Using native seeds provided by Southborough’s Open Space Preservation Commission, the club participated in a Winter Sow program last February. Winter sowing is a way to germinate seeds by mimicking how they grow in nature. Those resulting plants will be planted this coming Saturday, Sept. 30.
Please register to join in.
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