Ana Candelli, a student at Lyman Hall’s Vernon E. Cleaves Agricultural Science and Technology Center, recently became interested in creating pollinator gardens in Wallingford. She has partnered with the Wallingford Community Garden, the Wallingford Garden Club and the Wallingford Conservation Commission to increase awareness of this movement in Wallingford, and to join the Pollinator Pathways Project, which is working to encourage towns throughout the state to create pathways of pollinator friendly habitats.

We have many pollinator gardens in Wallingford, which are oases of native plantings grown without the use of pesticides or herbicides. We hope that others will join us to create many more. The increasing use of chemicals and the changes brought by climate change are leaving our pollinators struggling, and we need them to keep balance in our ecosystem.

In addition to creating waystations for pollinators, planting with native plants creates xeriscape gardens, which means that these gardens contain plants which sustain themselves in our area, and these gardens do not need to be watered. You can also reduce the size of your lawn by creating more pollinator gardens.