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PLANT community garden holding educational event
‘Field Day’ featuring pollinator garden is first major program since the project took off in spring
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WASHINGTON — A community garden in Washington designed to build local food security and education will hold its first major event this weekend, inviting anyone interested to a two-hour “field day” where volunteers will discuss a new pollinator garden.
PLANT Board Member and Cofounder Kerrie Willis said the program from 10 a.m. to noon on Aug. 2 would offer a tour of the new pollinator garden spanning one side of the city-owned lot, and give attendees insight about the benefits and logistics of starting their own such gardens.
The field day is one of PLANT’s first major public events since getting off the ground earlier this year, when a group of volunteers and local students built and filled a grid of raised beds on the property.
“For us, there’s a celebratory aspect, we’re excited to show it off,” Willis said of the new community garden on Van Buren Street. “Aside from volunteer workdays and a couple of harvest days this week, the last public event we had was in April, we held a ribbon-cutting for the launch with the Chamber.”
The event is a coordinated effort between PLANT — the local nonprofit that built the community garden and oversees its operation — as well as the statewide group Practical Farmers of Iowa, and the Xerces Society, a national group dedicated to insect conservation and education.
Willis said PLANT was thankful for Xerces Society’s grant-seeking assistance for the pollinator garden, and said the field day would feature Sarah Nizzi, a pollinator conservation specialist and biologist from the group, as a guest speaker.
“It would have taken us, probably, years to create what we created this season — a 100-foot pollinator garden — without their help,” she said.
Lunch will be provided to attendees, according to a promotional flyer for the field day, which said topics of discussion would include “creating habitat for beneficial insects” in small and urban areas, “supporting human and beneficial insect populations,” potential funding sources for pollinator gardens, and ways beneficial insects can reduce the need for pesticides.
Those interested are encouraged to register in advance by going to practicalfarmers.org/field-days.
Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com
