Exciting news for this year, CPP was awarded a Hennepin County Good Stewards grant to plant several new pollinator gardens, expand our native plant nursery, share free native trees and shrubs, and offer four different workshops about native plants and pollinators. First things first: If you would like to receive a garden or plants, or attend an upcoming workshop such as our garden design workshop with Metro Blooms on July 30, email corcoranpollinatorproject@gmail.com. If you live in or near the neighborhood and want to receive a native tree or shrub, fill out this Google form.
On July 20, we had our first workshop of the year with Zach Portman, a taxonomist at the University of Minnesota Bee Lab. We identified native plants, bumble bees, and other native bees at several CPP gardens planted in past years. During our tour, we saw five species of native bumble bees, but on the way back to our cars, we spotted a sixth:
The endangered rusty-patched bumble bee! Zach was showing us how to inspect one of their favorite plants, red bee balm, for telltale nectar-robbing holes, when two rusty-patched bees buzzed over. This is the first time I’ve seen them in Corcoran neighborhood–must be a sign that all the gardens we’ve been planting have been helping to support them! (For more on how to ID them, check out this resource: https://beelab.umn.edu/rusty-patched-bumble-bee).
In other, less exciting (for us) news, earlier this year we learned that our project coordinators, Elissa and Phillip, were moving to New England. These two have been installing gardens with CPP since 2018 and had taken over coordination and plant propagation for the last several years (and helped turn basically their entire street into a continuous pollinator garden). Phillip and Elissa, we miss you and are so grateful for all your dedication to community and biodiversity!
This spring our inspiring neighbors Casey, Anne, and Charlie and Relle (of Corcoran neighborhood’s own Magic Acres Farm), have taken over lots of functions of keeping this work going. In June we moved the plant nursery out of Elissa and Phillip’s yard and into Casey’s yard:
It’s exciting to see the baby plants we started last fall growing and getting ready for their new homes.
Stay tuned for new workshop dates and plant opportunities. Looking forward to gardening with you!
Corcoran Pollinator Project 