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The Pollinator Pathway is a project organized by volunteers from town conservation organizations (listed on each town's page) working together to establish pollinator-friendly habitat and food sources for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinating insects and wildlife along a series of continuous corridors. Most native bees have a range of about 750 meters, so the goal is to connect properties that are no farther apart than that. This project began in 2017 in Wilton, CT. Since then, pathways have been established in over 200 towns in CT, NY, MA, NJ, PA, RI, OR and the list keeps growing. The above map shows the towns in lower Fairfield County in CT that have joined together to provide this important connected habitat. To continue this growth, we invite you to start a Pollinator Pathway in your town. The following are some simple steps that have proved invaluable. Organize a group of interested conservation organizations (garden club, land trust, watershed organization, nature center, town conservation commission…). Create a steering committee of volunteers from each organization. Identify land of highest conservation value to the community, and identify a pathway that connects these areas as well as open spaces already protected. The Hudson to Housatonic Regional Conservation Partnership (H2H) can provide access to regional strategic conservation maps for planning purposes for groups in the following counties: Fairfield (CT), Westchester, Dutchess, or Putnam (NY). Hold a “kick-off” event at your library or community center to announce the launch of your pollinator pathway. Host speakers to discuss threats to pollinators, the importance of native plants to their survival, alternatives to pesticides… Contact us for speaker list. Let us know if you would like to have a page on the Pollinator-pathway.org website where you can list events and contact information for those interested in joining. Consider setting up a Facebook page, like @Wilton Pollinator Pathway, for example. Raise money through donations or grants to remove invasives and plant native plants in your town’s open spaces. Invite the community to volunteer at planting events. Show volunteers which plants are the local invasives and which natives are good replacements, then put everyone to work! So far, these organizations have supported plantings with grants: Sustainable CT, REI, FactSet, CT Ornithological Society, Patagonia, Hartford Audubon, several Rotary Clubs and Garden Clubs, and private foundations like Anne Richardson Fund and Global Preservation Society. Contact residents along the designated pathway and invite them to avoid using pesticides and add native plants to their landscaping. Consider offering that garden club members will visit on-site to advise on how to add native tree, shrubs, perennials or a meadow and which plants will work best in their yard. Consider sponsoring workshops for building bird houses and mason bee hotels, sponsor butterfly walks and talks on issues related to pollinators. Engage with your local municipality to enact a resolution or proclamation that will provide safety for pollinators. To read about what other municipalities have accomplished click here. Contact the local paper and engage them in helping to publicize the plight of pollinators and what your town is doing to help support them. Engage volunteers and residents in citizen science projects: keep a count of plants your town adds to its pathway; sponsor local bee, butterfly & bird counts; take part in Bumble Bee Watch, INaturalist, City Nature Challenge, or in NY the Empire State Native Pollinator Survey. Keep in touch and share ideas! More information on each of these steps is available. Contact us with questions at Info@pollinator-pathway. To download the Pollinator Pathway toolkit including logos, brochures and handouts, please click here: Pollinator Pathway Toolkit.

Join Pollinator Pathway groups in Norwalk, Wilton, New Canaan, Ridgefield and Redding in Connecticut who have already worked with One Tree Planted to help fund the planting of trees that are critical for our native bee species. Click here to fill out the One Tree Planted grant form. It takes less than 10 minutes to complete! One Tree Planted is an environmental charity dedicated to making it easier for individuals and businesses to give back to the environment. We are focused on creating a healthier climate, protecting biodiversity and supporting reforestation efforts around the world!

By Pinar O’Flaherty and Haven Colgate Hastings-on-Hudson, NY has long prided itself on its environmental record. Active residents have succeeded in many initiatives, from recycling programs, awareness campaigns, and expanding alternative energy installations to establishing a community composting program and ecological restorations, and they have helped the town become one of only seven municipalities achieving silver status in the state’s Climate Smart Communities program. It was only a matter of time before Hastings residents would form the Hastings Pollinator Pathway (HPP). The pandemic presented our small volunteer group of residents the time and opportunity to kick off the effort. Meeting weekly on Zoom, we researched pollinator pathway programs in other communities and set out on a mission to encourage residents to devote some space to native pollinator plants. We launched the Hastings Pollinator Pathway website in July, later adding a Facebook group, an Instagram account, and created a monthly newsletter to share resources and spread the word on area programs. We liaised with our Village trustees to include native plants in municipal construction projects and helped launch and promote a new Adopt-a-Spot program to give residents a formal way to install pollinator gardens on traffic islands, roadside verges and park corners. Our goal is to increase pollinator habitat and to create pathways between large green spaces to assist pollinators in their migrations. Since the bulk of our Village land is residential yards, we set out to encourage homeowners to add native pollinating plants to their gardens. Our target gardens range from potted plants on apartment-dwelling balconies to half-acre residential properties, area business and institutional properties, and municipal ones, including Hastings’ public parks. HPP project members spent the summer walking residential streets, scouting for existing pollinator gardens and noting the most critical gaps in habitat. We wrote hundreds of postcards to ask residents to add their gardens to their pathway map and join the HPP project, regardless of their garden’s current status. Nearly one hundred residents added themselves to our map, self-classifying into one of four categories, from “I’m not sure how to get started” to “my yard is pollinator heaven.” They included enthusiastic comments like, “I am super excited to find a way to help support our ecosystem in my own yard. I am going pesticide free, and working on incorporating more and more native plants! Next step is to de-lawn the grassy areas.” The HPP was thrilled by the positive response, but what really stood out for them were comments like, “How can I help?” and, perhaps most importantly, “I’m so excited about this, but I need help.” We created the Pollineighbor program to answer the two questions: “how can I help?” and “how can I get started?” We cross-referenced comments with the village map and began matching neighbors in need with their closest Pollineighbor, sometimes even recruiting those with established gardens who hadn’t yet volunteered. We now have online forms on our site for easy sign-up to offer expertise as a Pollineighbor or connect with one if you need direction. Pollineighbors offer a range of support, from advice on what to plant to sharing plants and seeds from their own gardens, and sometimes even some hands-on, “how-to” help. We find that neighbors talking to neighbors establishes the most pollinator-friendly, native-rich gardens, and that gardens influence other gardeners. This is a new program, so we are always looking for new Pollineighbors and encourage anyone with enthusiasm and knowledge to share to sign up! You don’t have to be an expert on native plants or have an exclusively native garden to participate. We just ask that you’re committed to being pesticide free and open to learning and sharing about the benefits of planting natives for pollinators. With spring in mind, additional Pollineighbor program plans are in the works, including in-garden demos, a village pathway parade, a seed exchange, and other events - pandemic permitting - through which gardeners, expert or novice, can meet to share tips, seeds, plants, and more. The HPP envisions a post-pandemic time when “garden-raising” events can bring neighbors together to help expand existing gardens or help new pollinator gardeners create habitats from the grassroots up. Most passionate gardeners can recall time spent side-by-side with a more experienced gardener, digging, sowing and planting in the dirt. Pollineighbors grow more than gardens.

By Mary Wilson The issue of coated seeds came to light recently when a severe contamination event was reported from an ethanol plant in Nebraska that was using coated corn seed for raw material. The seed corn, like the vast majority of seed corn in the U.S., had been coated with a pesticide, a neonicotinoid (neonic) that caused odors, strange illnesses in people, pets and wildlife, including near-by bee populations. The pollution had been spread through the company’s wastewater, as well as solid waste byproducts applied to the fields and sold to local farmers. Pesticides used in seed coatings are not regulated by the federal government once the coating has been applied. This scenario is likely not unique since neonic seed treatments are used on at least 160 million acres of U.S. crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton) each year. This accounts for nearly half of all U.S. crop land and represents the largest single use of insecticides in the country. Seeds, in essence, become pesticide delivery devices, with no federal oversight once the seeds have been coated. There are no federal requirements for safe handling, storage, disposal or even labeling. Farmers in most states do not know what is on their seed when they buy it and have no idea that any precautions should be taken. Additionally, federal tracking of pesticide data is greatly underestimating harm to the environment since neonic treated seeds are not considered to be a pesticide application by the EPA and thus are not tracked. Most of the pesticide in the coating becomes contamination of soil or water resources. Despite the fact that these seed coatings are applied to control insects that may feed upon seedlings, it is surprising that much of that pesticide coating does not actually enter the crop itself. Depending on the crop, only about five percent of the active chemical enters the plant. The remaining 95 percent of the pesticide is left to pollute the environment through seed dust or soil contamination and water runoff. This situation creates multiple toxic routes which can affect bees and other wildlife through the contaminated plant, air pollution, and toxic run-off. Studies have shown harmful effects on bumblebees and other wild bees, butterflies, beneficial insects as well as freshwater dependent species. Pesticide seed coatings generally do not increase crop yields. Most U.S. studies and new studies from the E.U. show that yields for common crops do not increase with the use of neonic seed coatings. While there may be some benefit depending on crop, climate and insect species, such benefit is frequently offset by the fact that most of the pesticide does not get to the plant. Additionally there are issues of harm to beneficial insects and resistance to the pesticide over time. Many think that integrated pest management (IPM) methods are the best control of pests without the use of seed treatments. And yet nearly 100% of corn seeds are treated with neonics. Not all seed coatings are pesticides. It should be noted there are seed coatings other than neonics. Sometimes very small seeds are coated so that they are easier to handle. Some grass seeds are coated with a material that aids in moisture retention. And sometimes fungicides are used as seed coatings. Kim Stoner of CAES says that “As far as I know, seeds treated with neonics are sold only to commercial growers, not to home gardeners. However, seeds treated with fungicides are sold to gardeners.” Fortunately, coated seeds have a brightly colored metallic look. It would be wise to handle any such seeds with caution. Unfortunately in many states coated seeds are not labeled, leaving the buyer unaware of any environmental or health concerns. Connecticut provides guidance to farmers who use neonic coated seeds and requires labeling of such seeds. The Connecticut Act Concerning Pollinator Health provides information and alternatives to farmers who use seeds coated with neonics, the aim being to reduce airborne dust associated with the planting process. An Act Concerning Connecticut’s Seed Law requires adequate labeling of coated seeds with the chemical or generic name of the coating substance for all treated agricultural, vegetable and flower seeds. The provision requires a cautionary statement in the event that the seed is harmful to human or other vertebrate animals. Harm to invertebrates (bees, butterflies, and insects) and harm to the environment are NOT covered. Even though Connecticut requires labeling, farmers may not know the names of neonics when they see the chemical or generic names on the label. Consumers should avoid seeds with the following chemical names: imadacloprid, clothianidin, acetamiprid, thiamethoxam and thiacloprid. Even with some state regulations regarding use and labeling of such seeds, Kim Stoner comments that “There is very little regulation or even tracking of treated seeds once they are sold to the farmer. Thus, the lack of statistics, and thus the situation at the ethanol plant in Nebraska.” CONCLUSION: Neonic-coated seeds are another example of indiscriminate poisoning of pollinators and ecosystems. As we learn more about the interconnectedness of natural systems, we realize that trying to fix one problem with yet another toxic pesticide may cause detrimental and sometimes far-reaching negative outcomes Whether you are a farmer, a small land owner, or a homeowner, managing the land using organic methods and concepts will help to reduce overload of chemicals to our landscapes. References: Gurian-Shepard, Doug PhD, June 2015, The Hidden Costs of Toxic Seed Coatings, Center for Food Safety Hoyle, Sarah and Black, Scott, Ethanol Plant Causes Severe Contamination in Nebraska, Xerces blog, January 2021 Quarles, William, August 2019, Neonic Seeds are Not Needed, The IPM Practioner, Vol. XXXVI Stoner, Kimberly, February 8, 2021, email communication, CAES Walker, Larissa, December 6, 2016, EPA Should Stop Sugarcoating the Catastrophic Effects of Neonic Seed Coatings, Center for Food Safety

We're delighted to report that the Winter 2021 issue of 2 Million Blossoms features an in-depth story on the Pollinator Pathway Northeast by freelance writer and nature lover Greta Burroughs. Launched in January 2020, 2 Million Blossoms offers readers 100+ pages of insight, exploration, science, and how-to's along with gorgeous illustrations and photographs, all dedicated to protecting our pollinators. Click here to read Pollinator Pathways: Restoring an Ecosystem. If you enjoy it, you're bound to love all the content in this beautiful quarterly publication. Until March 31, 2 Million Blossoms is offering all Pollinator Pathway members and Buzz readers a special discount on annual subscriptions. To subscribe, go to 2 Million Blossoms, click on the Subscribe tab and enter discount code POLLINATORPATHWAYS for $5.00 off when you check out. Applies to both digital and print subscriptions. Then get ready to pedal along the migratory route of monarchs, learn how to provide nesting habitat for solitary bees, chase bees through the desert to find rare sources of water, become a better beekeeper and active steward of the environment, explore mountain ranges and vast prairies in search of pollinators, and adventure far without ever leaving your home.

My name is Devon Wolfe and I am a current intern for the Norwalk River Watershed Association/Pollinator Pathways Northeast. I am a Darien native who loves the outdoors. I graduated from Greens Farms Academy with a concentration in global studies, and I attend Claremont McKenna College in California where I am majoring in economics and minoring in gender studies. On campus I am captain of the women’s tennis team, serve as a first year guide to incoming students, and as a research analyst for the financial economics institute. I am passionate about sustainability and spend my time reading about low-carbon and efficient infrastructure, hydroelectric fuel cells, wildlife protection, and equal access to clean water. I am beyond grateful to be working with the NRWA and Pollinator pathways who are transforming our communities, and my current project entails outlining key 2021 policy legislation regarding toxic chemicals and land conservation.

By Cathy Smith Carpenter bees (genus Xylocopa) are our largest native bee, along with bumble bee queens. There are several species in North America, but the most common in the North East is Xylocopa virginica. You've no doubt seen them hovering near your house - they look like large bumble bees but with a shiny, hairless abdomen. And all carpenter bees have one thing in common - they are expert pollinators. They do it by buzz pollination - using their buzzing vibrations to remove and collect pollen from flowers, thereby fertilizing them. While their tunnel-excavating ways can be a bit of a nuisance for homeowners, they do far more good than harm. Given their role as power pollinators and that fact that they are pretty docile (the males don't sting and the females only do if provoked), it is alarming to see carpenter bee killing products pop up in local stores. Instead of "eliminating" carpenter bees, as these products promise, let's just try to gently redirect them. "As forests are cut down and manicured, many of these dead trees are the first to be removed. This leaves carpenter bees with very few options for nesting sites. It’s not difficult to see why our houses, decks, and barns look inviting to such a creature," according to Spriggly's Beescaping. Fortunately there are some steps you can take to deter carpenter bees from nesting in your wooden structures. The first is to provide them with some natural alternatives - leaving some wood piles and dead trees on your property, for example. Other measures include: - paint or stain your wooden structures. Carpenter bees like their wood untreated. - try citrus oil as a repellant. - plug old bee holes. - create some noise with wind chimes or other devices that are pleasant to humans but enough to make a carpenter bee look elsewhere. And maybe the next time you see a product designed to eliminate carpenter bees, suggest to the store owner they eliminate the product instead! For more details, read How to Stop Carpenter Bees Naturally And for more on buzz pollination, check out Buzz pollination: studying bee vibrations on flowers

Many of us live in homes surrounded by lawn. We have learned to avoid fertilizers and pesticides that turn our ponds scummy and threaten the health of our children and pets. But yet, we are accustomed to that neat and tidy platter of green. It’s an aesthetic that is so ingrained that we think anything perceived as “messy” risks a backlash. Afterall, neighbors can get irritated if things don’t “look good”. But here’s the rap—we’re in deep trouble in terms of fundamentals. Our landscapes are in decline. We already suffer from fragmentation, invasives, deer browse, and herbicides. Maybe the time has come to consider a new aesthetic not dependent on chronic mowing which turns our properties into dead zones for wildlife. What can we do? PLANT FLOWERS!! Flowers were designed by plants to attract and accommodate the animal that 80% of them depend on for survival—bees. “But wait...” you say, “Don’t bees sting? Why would I want to attract bees to my yard?” Because, if you plant NATIVE flowers, you’ll attract NATIVE bees. Native bees have no interest in stinging you. Except for the bumblebee, they are solitary creatures with no hive to defend. Only female native bees have the potential to sting and 1⁄4 of those females have a stinger that is so ineffective that it can’t penetrate skin. Moreover, if you happened to squish a female native bee and get a sting, there is no known allergic reaction in humans. Thanks to the work of Brett Gilman, a June 2020 Wilton (CT) High School graduate, we have a guide for creating a flowering lawn substitute that will make your neighbors envious. Brett’s passion is eco-landscaping and habitat restoration for pollinators. Inspired by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West’s book Planting in a Post Wild World, he has developed an aesthetically pleasing palette of native flowering plants, grasses, and ground cover by thinking structurally and designing with large groupings of plants that bloom in early, mid, and late season. After working as Wilton Land Conservation Trust’s field ranger and open space manager this past summer, Brett created a landscape plan for a biodiversity sanctuary on a protected open space parcel in the heart of the Wilton Pollinator Pathway. His plantings provide overlapping bloom times, differing flower shapes and heights, and stunning coloration. By changing the number of plants used in a grouping, a homeowner can replace a section of lawn as small as 10’ x 10’ or as large as 1⁄2 acre especially if shrubs are added as larval hosts for butterflies (see Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home). Here are some of Brett’s plant choices for native plants to use in that sunny space of your yard that is now lawn: Spring combo: Left to Right - Lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata), Foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) and Hairy beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) Mid-summer combos: #1 Rattlesnake master (Button eryngium); Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum); Pale Coneflower (Echinacea pallida) #2 Spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata); Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) Fall combos: Early goldenrod (Solidago juncea) and Sweet goldenrod (Solidago odora) Smooth aster (Symphyotricum laeve) and White heath aster (Symphyotricum ericoides) Grasses: Prairie dropseed (Sporoabolis heterolepsis) and Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) Ground cover: Fragaria virginiana (common strawberry) It’s up to each of us to inspire others to think differently about our outdated lawn paradigm. The decision to change what you do has to be a conscious one. But imagine the impact if, by growing flowers instead of turf, we alter the perception of beauty from a lawn clipped and mowed into sterile perfection to one that is an array of flowers that bloom from spring until frost.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably well aware of the benefits that native plants have for our pollinators. You likely know that pesticides and herbicides have negative impacts to the fauna of our yards as well as unintended side effects to our broader environments. These issues begin to push against the conventional yard and garden industry, but in order to best support our pollinators and other beneficial wildlife, we must do much more, and can accomplish this by turning to nature for our inspiration and ungardening. Swapping ornamental and invasive plants for natives and going organic with your land care are great first steps, but even managing our yards organically in conventional ways will still create imbalances in our yard. Bagging leaves for removal and laying mulch are two examples that work hand in hand.Bagging leaves removes not only nutrients, but overwintering pupae and other beneficial insects and fungi. Mulching is necessary to hold in moisture, but doing so prevents our native solitary bees from successfully nesting in the soil. By instead leaving the leaves where you can and ditching the mulch, you keep those protective benefits to the soil, while making nutrient amendments unnecessary. The dead leaves are much less dense, allowing many insects to overwinter, and by spreading them unevenly, as nature does, you can allow soil access for ground nesting insects. It is important, however, to not just look to what activities to stop, but also seek inspiration on how to proceed. Two ways that our yards and pollinator gardens often differ from wild areas are the density and diversity of plants. Monarchs are not unique in their specialized relationship with milkweeds; many of our insects are specialists, meaning that they rely on one plant or a small group of plants for some or all of their life cycle. These specialist relationships exist not just for the larvae of pollinators, but insects that spend their entire lives eating foliage, bark, or other plant parts, fungi, parasitic plants, and many other classes of life. These relationships create an ecosystem that is strengthened by many repetitions; many fungi-plant-caterpillar- relationships that allow the ecosystem as a whole to be more resilient. One year may be good for some plants and insects and bad for others, but when there is enough redundancy in the environment, these fluctuations will not cause the ecosystem as a whole to collapse. Copying nature in this way, and the overhaul it can entail, might seem a bit daunting, but if we lean into nature and agree to let it lead the way, it will. As humans, we like to have an end goal in mind and a time frame for getting there, but this is not how nature works. You can, of course, still make decisions and choose direction for your yard, but to ungarden your yard you have to accept that plants will move and the landscape will change over time, and agree to work with the seasons and the pace that nature sets. Perhaps the most striking contrast between the controlling desires of conventional land care and the ever-changing nature of nature are weeds. What is a weed? It sounds trite, but a weed truly is just a plant growing where we don’t want it. The plants widely considered weeds are a mix of invasive, naturalized, and native species that share some or all of a set of characteristics. They are often annuals, or are able to reproduce in their first year, usually produce large quantities of seed that is easily spread or can spread easily through other means, can tolerate very poor conditions, and thrive in disturbance and marginalized land. All invasive species are weeds, but not all weeds are invasive. In their native ecosystems, these weedy species function as the immune response of the ecosystem. When a disturbance, such as a fire, wind storm, land slide, or flood happens, killing the existing vegetation and exposing or eroding the soil, these seeds germinate quickly, hold the soil in place, and allow the area to recover. This ensures a continuous supply of food for the pollinators and other beneficial wildlife in the area, while creating a sheltered environment for slower growing, more long lived plants to germinate from the seedbank, arrive on the wind or by animal, and become established. Over time the weedy annuals become shaded or outcompeted by the perennials, and the ecosystem develops into a more stable community. The initial, “weedy”, species then return to where they came from; some fall back into the soil, ready to germinate when the light reaches them and others drift off on their pappus or in the belly of a bird, to a bare spot where they can grow. Many of our most problematic invasive species fulfil this protective function in their native ecosystems, but separated from the soil fungi, specialist insects, and pathogens that keep them in balance they run rampant. In our gardens, we simulate disturbance constantly by weeding and maintaining our plants further apart than they are in nature. To the seeds in the soil, the light from the lack of plant density is a cue to germinate, which they do. Between the immense number of seeds in the soil and the reinforcements arriving on the wind, keeping a garden weed free is a Sisyphean task of our own creation. If we instead allow the native “weeds” to remain, they will grow to fill the space, greatly slow the constant onslaught of new plants, provide resources to our pollinators and other critters, and allow an environment for native perennials to become established. Beyond the physical appearance of weeds, the gardener’s other common complaint is that these plants outcompete their horticultural varieties. This is true, but it is another piece of conventional gardening that we should examine if our goal is to provide the best possible habitat for our pollinators and other beneficial wildlife. Wild species have been honed by natural selection to be strong competitors that are highly integrated with the ecosystem in which they evolved. By contrast, our horticultural flowers have been bred or selected by humans concerned primarily with aesthetics. Although quite beautiful, these plants are often quite inbred, making them very weak competitors. Beyond beauty, they offer little in the way of resources to our native pollinators and other critters; some even have been bred to have more petals rather than reproductive parts. Luckily the most local native plants that are the most adapted to your local fauna are free! So how to go about all of this? Changing something so fundamentally can be overwhelming, so taking things slow is necessary to avoid burnout and build a strong foundation. First, determine the areas where you will begin ungardening and stop doing the traditional yard maintenance discussed above. Consider other acts of yard maintenance critically as well – what is necessary and what is habit? Next, identify the invasive species growing on the land you have access to and begin removing them. At this point, instead of just learning to recognize the invasive species you are dealing with, use them as tools to learn plant identification. The consistency and clarity of scientific names is very helpful to making sense of the world of plants, but even if you want to stick with common names, I suggest learning the plant families and the botanical traits that distinguish them. By learning the shared characteristics of common plant families, you will be able to more easily identify new plants you come across. Once you’ve removed most of the invasive species and sharpened your identification skills, you can begin to identify the non-invasive volunteers. These plants will either be native or naturalized, which are plants that are introduced, but not invasive. Naturalized plants are great to keep around because they can reduce competition and ‘predation’ on native plants in a number of ways; as nectar sources for honeybees, as blossoms to decorate our tables while we enjoy the native species from our windows, and as teas, dyes, and so much more. It is, of course, important to pay attention to how a plant acts in your yard in particular, and take steps to manage any introduced species that are aggressive; but many can contribute to our ecosystems and lives in valuable ways. By ungardening our yards we can help create a natural community that is more resilient in the face of disturbance, and we can begin to better understand our place within that ecosystem as a contributing and benefiting member. We must not, however, allow ourselves to limit this compassion and understanding to the nonhuman world, but examine our interactions with other humans in the same way. I encourage you to connect with the indigenous community on whose land you are living, and, in terms used by many nations on this continent, become in good relation to them, and to look for ways to support all of the members of your community. Aubree Keurajian (she/her) is a senior botanist and founder of Ungardening Native Plants, a native plant restoration and consultation organization focused on bringing the tools of restoration gardening to anyone with access to land. She was born and raised in Durham, CT and currently lives in East Granby, CT. She has a bachelor’s degree in Systems Ecology from Cornell University. Check her out online at ungardening.org, or on Instagram @ungardening.