Denise Ellsworth, director of the Honey Bee and Native Pollinator Education Program at OARDC's Department of Entomolog, is pleased to have a pollinator garden on campus in Chadwick Arboretum & Learning Gardens. The plants for this project are supplied by the OSU Bee lab at no charge.The Pollinator gardens are replicated around Ohio where feedback on bee activity is provided by Master Gardeners and local volunteers. The feedback includes what plants are being used by the pollinators.
"We depend on bee pollinators for much of what we eat and drink, and bees are also essential to ecological health," said Denise Ellsworth. "Worldwide, bees are threatened due to habitat loss, pests, pesticides, climate change and more," she said.
Chadwick Arboretum & Learning Gardens Prairie Plants and Monarch Butterfly Waystation Garden, located in Arboretum North is the perfect location for a polinator garde.
This project offers a value added educational opportunity for the Chadwick Arboretum North Location and continues the Bee Friendly/ Monarch Waystation initiated last year. Sharon Treaster, retired Laboratory Technologist, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, is being trained to monitor the site and will be presenting on this topic in the fall of 2014 to Ohio Beekeepers associations OCVN programs. It's an exciting time for Chadwick Arboretum & Learning Gardens and for the bees that frequent our gardens.