This November and December the Horticulture Committee has been holding a series of meetings aimed at educating members about the Pollinator Pathway project, which has successfully established continuous corridors of pollinator-friendly habitat in neighboring Connecticut and Westchester counties. https://www.pollinator-pathway.org/about  The Committee discussed with Putnam County Master Gardener Lynne Bernstein what role PGC might play to bring the energy of the Pollinator Pathway project to Putnam County. Since one garden won’t make a difference, but the totality will, the now-formed PGC Pollinator Pathway committee will focus on necessary steps in outreach - first to the Club, then to interested conservation organizations, and finally to the Philipstown Community. Given that the Committee‘s members include those with responsibility for the Provisionals, the Plant Sale, the Garrison School garden, and Boscobel, the hope is that energy about the initiative will spread organically through PGC.

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Further sessions will involve helping members in planning what changes might make their own gardens more pollinator-friendly, developing lists of season-long blooming native plants, and setting up a cooperative to source plants so that members can hit the ground in the 2020 gardening season running. Since most native bees have a range of about 750 meters, members can know their gardening efforts will make a difference both in their own neighborhoods and as part of a wider tapestry.  In helping to create an environmental whole worth more than the sum of its parts, they will be fulfilling PGC’s mission of horticulture, conservation and community.

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