Pollinator Pathways blooming across region
Along a Pollinator Pathway, people plant native trees and shrubs, and favor wildflowers over flavor-of-themonth nursery exotics.
In a few years, 30 towns in southwestern Connecticut and adjoining towns across the New York border that have established such pathways. More butterflies may flutter as a result, and the humble hum of wild bees may buzz a little louder.
The movement is spreading. Newtown, Ridgefield, Redding and Wilton are on board. Brookfield and Danbury may join as well.
Interest in creating such pathways is blooming in the center of the state. Groups in New Haven are planting pollinator gardens in the midst of that city’s urban whir. It seems ideas, as well as plants, can send out seeds and take root all over the place.
“It’s been really amazing,” said Louise Washer, president of the Norwalk River Watershed Association, which has been one of the groups most responsible for getting the word out on the Pollinator Pathway concept.
“We’re excited,” said Theodora Pinou, a biology professor at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, who hopes to involve her graduate students in creating such a pathway by the fall semester. “It’s just a great opportunity for us.’’
Local nurseries are catching on — especially those already involved in selling native plants.
“There’s just a huge demand for them, and it something that’s appealing from an environmental sense,’’ said Darryl Newman, manager at Planter’s Choice Nursery in Newtown. “It does feel good.’’
More information can be found on the watershed’s website at norwalkriver.org or at Pollinator-Pathway.org
The concept comes out of the realization that many pollinating insects depend on native plants for pollen and nectar. Non-native species — not to mention invasive plants — don’t sustain them nearly as well.
This affects the ecological food chain. Butterflies lay their eggs on only certain species of trees and plants. In the spring, migrating birds depend on the caterpillars crawling from those eggs for food. Fewer native plants means fewer butterflies, fewer caterpillars and fewer birds.
“People have to understand that butterflies exist to mate and lay eggs,” said Victor DeMasi, of Redding, and a lepidopterist par excellence. “They don’t grow. All the sugar they get from nectar is used to nourish their eggs.”
While they may sweeten the hives of honeybees, the pathways can be vital to native pollinators.
“There are 349 species of native bees,” said Kim Stoner, an entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, who has advised the Pollinator Pathways groups about native plants. “There’s only one species of honeybee and it’s not native.”
The goal, Stoner said, is give native bees the plants that will be blossoming from spring to fall.
“In the spring, blossoming trees like red maples are important,” she said. “In the fall, you want goldenrod and fall asters.”
While other cities in the country have adopted the Pollinator Pathway concept, the idea first took root in Wilton.
Donna Merrill, who is active in the Hudson-to-Housatonic, which is trying to foster land conservation partnerships on both sides of the ConnecticutNew York border, is also executive director of the Wilton Land Conservation Trust.
Using grant money from the U.S. Forest Service, she began working with private landowners in Wilton to get them to plant native species and to stop using the pesticides that are killing pollinators.
“The vast majority of our open space is privately owned,” Merrill said. “So, how do we get people to be responsible stewards of their two acres? My hook was that I gave them a free tree. I got lots of interest.”
By 2017, there was enough pathway momentum for Merrill, working with the land trust, Hudson-to-Housatonic and the Woodcock Nature Center to start the first Pollinator Pathway connecting landowners in Wilton, Ridgefield and Weston.
Merrill said new pathways have grown as different groups — land trusts, conservation commissions and garden clubs — have joined in.
“For some reason, everyone loves them,” she said.
Jana Hogan, president of the Woodcock Nature Center, which straddles the Ridgefield-Wilton line, said people want to participate, in part, because of the dire news about the decline of many pollinators.
“People understand it’s important,” she said.
Washer, of the Norwalk River Watershed Association, said there’s also a sense that in creating these pathways, a community of like-minded individuals are coming together to create something bigger than one backyard garden.
“That’s been the coolest part of it,” she said.