this is a great story....i love the idea of promoting the Pollinator Pathway and will be looking for ways to do this....hmmmm and of course i will be sitting in my garden watching and photographing bees.........
Native bees play bigger role as honeybees decline
Native pollinators such as bumblebees are gaining new appreciation as European honeybees, the pollination mainstay of commercial agriculture, continue to struggle.
By Linda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter
.........In recognition of the pollinator problem, Congress in the 2008 farm bill included cost sharing to encourage farmers to plant some of their land just for bugs, to diversify the nation's pollinator portfolio with more native bees and other beneficial insects.
The adage proves true: Build it, and they will come. Sarah Bergmann got a $6,000 grant from the city of Seattle last year to transform the parking strip in her Central District neighborhood into what she dubs a Pollinator Pathway, planted with the help of 50 neighbors last November.
Once a desert of grass with a few maples, the 108-foot-long, 12-foot-wide strip today blooms with plants selected to attract pollinators. It's buzzing with life that has spilled over to plantings all around the neighborhood. An orange trumpet vine festooning a fence out back is mobbed with bees too busy to bother anyone, some stacked two to a flower.
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