by Sandy Garland
The first event in WPP’s series of pollinator garden tours was a huge success. Jane’s Walk organizers helped us manage the 40+ participants and we quickly sorted into two groups to walk around the Fletcher Wildlife Garden and explore the various habitats.
We were also lucky to have Lydia Wong along to find and indentify various bees. Berit, Maria, Chris, and Christine, all key WPP members, were on hand to answer questions and chat with participants, and members of the OFNC’s Education and Publicity committee, Gord, Hannah, and Lloyd, helped steer people in the right direction and answer questions about the Ottawa Field-Naturalists.
Thanks so much to Jane’s Walk volunteers who helped manage logistics.
Berit Erickson, whose pollinator garden is featured in a later tour (9 September), was on hand to answer questions about attracting pollilnators to an urban garden.
Lydia Wong, a graduate student from the University of Ottawa, loves to talk about bees. She brought along a net and vials to temporarily capture bees and allow us to see various species close up.
Lydia has set up bee boxes in various pollinator gardens around Ottawa as part of her research on urban bees. Mining bees and leafcutters have used the nest at the FWG, as well as Grass-carrying Wasps.
Wild Pollinator Partners aims to bring together people who are interested in helping our native pollinators. The network includes a number of organizations – government and non-government – researchers, gardeners, scientists, and other people who are passionate about pollinators.
Walks like this one provide an opportunity to meet these people and become inspired by their work.
Please try to join us for other walks in this series. We are visiting a variety of pollinator patches and gardens. You’ll learn something new at each one.
Interest in our natural world is increasing and walks like this one present a wonderful opportunity to look at the creatures that share our world and learn something about their lives.
Awesome! Thank you to all the people who contributed in organizing this activity! Thank you for raising awareness for our precious pollinators!