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Team effort
City of Greenwood volunteers pose with a newly installed Mason bee and leaf cutter bee nesting box they installed in one of the communities Bee City USA pollinator gardens.
Photo courtesy of Ann Barklow
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Beneficial beauty
Eagle Mound in Lake City is a bronze sculpture atop a planted hill of annual color featuring pollinator-friendly plants such as cosmos, globe amaranth, pink drift rose, bronze fennel and summer snapdragons.
Photo courtesy of Katie Dickson
In the spring of 2018, on a sunny morning in downtown Lake City, 40 students from the Boys and Girls Club work diligently planting a barren stretch of public park ground with wildflowers that will soon blossom and attract a variety of bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects to their city.
Across the state in Greenwood, adult volunteers are on a similar mission, spending their morning installing a wooden nesting box in one of their city’s pollinator gardens. The structure will provide a safe nesting habitat for two super pollinators, mason bees and leafcutter bees.
Why do these people put forth so much effort to help insects? Katie Dickson, senior horticulturist with Moore Farms Botanical Garden in Lake City, explains: “Seventy-five percent of the world’s food, beverage and fiber crops are pollinated by insects. That equates to one in every three bites of food we eat being provided by pollinators. They are critical to our food supply. Without them, we’ll no longer have certain foods.”
Plant it and they will come
As part of the Bee City USA initiative, communities and colleges across the country—including Lake City, Greenwood and the Medical University of South Carolina—are transforming their public spaces into pollinator-friendly habitats for bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, hummingbirds and other beneficial creatures.
The project is the brainchild of Phyllis Stiles, a beekeeper in Asheville, North Carolina, who decided to take action when she witnessed a massive die-off of honeybees. “We knew something had to be done. It wasn’t just the honeybees; other pollinators were under threat as well,” she says.
The Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA programs began in 2012 to encourage cities and colleges to reintroduce pollinator-friendly native plants and habitat into their landscaping. The message is the same for both initiatives: Plant it and they will come. And it doesn’t take long for small changes in the urban landscape to have big impacts on local bee populations, Stiles says.
“It takes very little time for the pollinators to find their new homes along with plentiful sources of food and places to nest,” Stiles says. “Insects are tiny and only need nectar and pollen and a small space to live. Most of them have short lifespans, and they rarely travel farther than a few hundred yards from where they emerged as adults. Depending on the species, one pollinator garden may provide all they need.”
Bringing the community together
Lake City became a Bee City in 2015 with enthusiastic support from city residents, including the Boys and Girls Club. On field days at public parks, students volunteered to plant native wildflowers and learned about the importance of pollinators.
“The most important thing I told the kids was to come back with family and friends and be proud of your work,” Dickson says. “Take ownership of it, knowing you did something good for the pollinators.”
The enthusiasm is not limited to planting pollinator gardens. During the 2018 ArtFields competition, painter Matt Wiley created a beautiful mural entitled “The Good of the Hive,” across a storage building, and Lance Turner decorated a nearly block-long wall with a painting of native plants.
Dickson says interest has not waned since the inception of the Bee City project, and curiosity about landscaping with native flora is spreading throughout the community. She receives many requests from garden clubs and other groups for talks and presentations about using natural pest management strategies and making lawns more attractive to pollinators.
“It’s a privilege to work with beautiful plants and insects every day,” she says. “There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.”
The remaking of ‘Green’wood
Horticulturist Ann Barklow moved to Greenwood five years ago when she was hired by the city to teach other city employees how to reduce pesticide use and work native plants into landscaping projects. The ‘Green’wood movement quickly gained momentum, and in 2017 the city council approved a plan to officially become a Bee City USA affiliate.
City residents learned about the campaign from presentations, meetings and dinners hosted by Barklow and city leaders, who explained the importance of pollinators to the community. Volunteers flocked to the project, she says.
“People loved it!” Barklow says. “They loved the notion of providing for pollinators, especially after finding out how much trouble we are in with the loss of insects and pollinators.”
Barklow is determined to keep the momentum going by encouraging more city residents to include native plants in their home gardens. As an incentive, people who volunteer with the city get free seeds and plants, she says.
“I can’t tell you how many pictures are sent to me from volunteers showing off their garden and the pollinators visiting it.”
A plan for all seasons
There is more to maintaining a Bee City than just planting wildflowers in spring. In the fall of 2018, Greenwood city employees gathered seeds and cuttings from the hardiest pollinator plants, and Barklow visited master gardeners in search of cuttings from their gardens. Volunteers shifted to a new task—growing plants in the greenhouse over the winter for planting this spring.
The same process took place in Lake City, where Dickson and her crew worked with propagation specialists at Moore Farms Botanical Garden. Now that spring has arrived, new pollinator gardens will soon transform the landscapes around Lake City and Greenwood into beautiful vistas of color.
This year, Barklow plans to expand Greenwood’s seven existing pollinator gardens and involve more volunteers in landscaping and maintenance. A favorite project among the volunteers is the city’s edible landscape which grows produce for a local food bank.
“Visitors to the garden can see how to put edibles in their landscape instead of the more traditional backyard vegetable garden,” she says. “Many of the flowers provide nectar for beneficial insects, and their larvae stage will then feed on the pests. This garden also provides for many pollinators which in turn give us more produce. Less pests and more produce! What’s not to love?”
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Get More
For more information on the national Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA initiative, visit beecityusa.org.
To learn about the pollinator-friendly campaigns in South Carolina, see visitlakecitysc.com/bee-city-usa and cityofgreenwoodsc.com/living/green-spaces/bee-city-usa.
For advice on pollinator-friendly home gardening, visit Clemson University’s Cooperative Extension Home and Garden Information Center at hgic.clemson.edu.