Pollinator Garden

The community garden complex, located at the Francis Wyman school, is a multigenerational education facility offering opportunities for individuals to learn how to grow healthy vegetables in partnership with native plants and pollinators. A destination site where residents and business groups are encouraged to volunteer their time or just observe how organic practices improve plant health.

The complex is a collaboration of town departments, non-profits, and the garden club. It consists of a “Victory” garden providing produce for People Helping People, a non-profit currently servicing food insecure residents and families, individual garden plots leased through Parks and Recreation, a K-5 school garden, a meadow, a pollinate garden, and picnic area. The site is about two-acres in size with forty percent under cultivation.

The Club has been involved since inception in 2013. The site was developed in cooperation with the Town DPW, School Department, Parks and Recreation, People Helping People, Business Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and individual residents. The site is maintained by volunteers comprised of GC members and residents. GC member, Peter Coppola, is the senior volunteer managing the site; coordinating maintenance activities, planning, and directing business groups and individual volunteers.

In 2021, People Helping People (PHP) applied for and received a grant to introduce pollinators to the complex. In the application, member Coppola expressed the need to create a meadow that would attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators to help increase the productivity of the community garden that volunteers had been nurturing since 2012. The more vegetables being pollinated, the greater the yield for the food pantry.

Following the award on Earth Day, Martin Landscaping of Burlington, graded the site and placed hardscapes to a GC plan. Throughout the summer GC members along with volunteers from PHP and the Francis Wyman school prepared the site, sowing wildflower seed and planting common milkweed, coneflower, butterfly weed, joe pye weed, liatris, rudbeckia, and columbine. In addition to the purchased seedlings, GC members donated native plants from their home gardens. As work progressed, passersby engaged the volunteers, complimenting them on the meadow and asked questions about future plans.

As a measure of success, once established the Food Pantry Garden experienced a 40% increase in yield!

Every spring garden club members continue to clear the meadow of debris, weeds, and invasive plants, and make sure the existing plants continue to grow and bloom in the pollinate garden.