Take time to visit pollinator gardens

June 20, 2025, with over 15 hours of daylight, is the official start of summer and a peak of abundance. With other ways you may have to celebrate the Summer Solstice, it’s a good time to visit gardens designed or transformed to align our lives more closely with beneficial insects and other wildlife.

What if your yard could support more than just grass? The organization Pollinator Pathways of Addison County next month will host a talk that will help homeowners answer that question.

October 12 was a perfect fall day with warm sun and clear air for the Native Seed Harvesting Workshop at Fran and Spence Putnam’s Weybridge gardens, pond perimeter and field.

On July 14 a group of two-dozen or so adults from Vermont gathered at Birdsong Acres in Cornwall for a Northeast Organic Farming Association and Pollinator Pathway of Addison County-sponsored event.

The Spirit In Nature Annual Meeting for 2024, held at the Ripton Community Center on May 12, combined tradition and innovation as SpIN celebrated the 25th anniversary of its founding on Mothers’ Day 2009.

How fitting that on June 17, the first day of National Pollinator Week, the members of the Vermont House and Senate overrode Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of H.706, known as the Pollinator Protection Bill.

Happy Pollinator Week June 17-24. Yes, another way to celebrate our heroes, this time butterflies, moths, beetles, hummingbirds and, most importantly, the bees.

The Spirit In Nature Interfaith Paths organization will celebrate its 25th Anniversary May 12 by giving its Eco-Spirit Award to the Pollinator Pathways founders.

Efforts to protect pollinators, grow affordable housing and pass healthcare reform were among the hot topics of the final legislative breakfast of 2024, held Monday at the Weybridge Congregational Church.

It’s often been said that many hands make light work, and that’s certainly the idea behind the volunteer “working bee” groups being organized by The Addison County Relocalization Network.

Make no mistake, honeybees and beekeepers in Vermont are struggling.

Avanleigh Cota hosted a committee of Pollinator Pathway of Addison County gardeners in Starksboro to share the process behind her project, Champlain Valley Monarchs.

Recently I bought a few chrysanthemums and asters from a local hardware store, but as I was about to plant them, I wondered if they too had been laced with the neonicotinoids I’d so carefully avoided when buying my summer bedding flowers.

Fall is the time of year we generally begin to put our gardens to bed. I have recently changed my garden practices considerably since learning that our gardens can be important havens for pollinating insects and other wildlife during every season of the y … (read more)

The writer Henry James has been quoted as saying the loveliest phrase in the English language is summer afternoon. I say add a visit to Monkton’s and Charlotte’s pollinator gardens on such an afternoon.