Greg Wilson, Nederland. Thinking about spring gardens already? Here’s more food for thought.

Can we protect pollinators in the mountains?  Nature needs our awareness and support. Why not? Let’s do it!

Consumers are encouraged to make their own inquiries and to let growers know they will only support nurseries selling plants grown without the use of neonicotinoids or systemics in pre-treated seeds, sprays, granules or soil. These are the bad guys: Acetamiprid, Clothianidin, Sulfoxaflor, Dinotefuran, Thiacloprid, Imidacloprid, Thiamethoxam.

The year before last, I reclaimed the front yard for nature and planted pollinator-loving radish sprout seeds across a thin layer of soil atop some rotted wood and old composts. I could not believe what happened! Apparently there was some kind of critical flowering plant mass happening over a long period of time, so moon moths, seven or eight kinds of bees that I could identify, hummingbirds, and other friends moved in to enjoy the front yard for most of the season.

Covercrops seem to work really well here, and I will use radish again, along with more hyssop, catnip, mint, sedums, clover, currant, potatoes, flowering vines.

Bees and butterflies benefit the most from reliable contiguous areas of land that they can go back to year after year. If they are migratory like the monarch, there is a real need to have a home base.

The site BeeSafeBoulder.com is great and available to help us as a community here in Nederland to be more conscious of our impacts and the simple ways to mitigate them so that we may share these beautiful mountains in harmony with the pre-existing natural splendor. (You do know that ecosystem rights are a real legal thing now, not only in Ecuador…? I digress.)

The “Bee Safe Neighborhoods” project is worth supporting, as are its original champions at livingsystemsinst.org in Golden. Wow! they are doing great things. The Bee Safe Neighborhoods is just part of their great educational framework for helping us live together in relationship with earth.

In Golden, the Bee Safe Neighborhoods project tracks commitments of neighborhood blocks to ensure that the Bee Safe Neighborhood will be there to protect the small groups of bees that are managing to survive despite the tremendous overuse of the toxic chemicals that are listed above in this article. (I took the time to pronounce each of 'em.)

Awareness will change this. We don't need to lose our bees. Learning these chemicals’ names and looking for them on products helps everyone to find alternatives and plan changes to their modus operandi. Our fragile ecosystem here in the mountains needs us.

The Bee Safe Neighborhoods project is effective in helping bees because it ensures that whole areas of land are “safe zones” for bees.  When we get everyone who is living, owning, renting, camping, whatevering, on contiguous blocks of land to agree, we can all enjoy the benefit of the living ecosystem – especially the bees!

By keeping this campaign info on your fridge, and spreading the word in your neighborhoods, planting more beautiful full-season flowering plants, good smelling ones, next summer can be sweet and fragrant for us all.