From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 2021.
Community gardens are a valuable social, ecological, and environmental resource, but we currently know very little about the pollinator species visiting them, their ecology, and the impact of human activity on their populations in Washington, DC. Intentionally or not, organic community gardens provide food and shelter for wildlife such as birds, mammals, snails and slugs, insects, spiders and even roly poly crustaceans. Gardeners are intricately connected to nature and in one sense are wildlife managers.
A new citizen scientist project, PolliNation DC, is being launched on April 30, 2021. The project encourages DC community garden volunteers to record the bee, butterfly, wasp, fly, moth, beetle, ant, and other insect species visiting flowers and acting as pollinators for both native and non-native plants in DC community garden sites. The DC Department of Parks and Recreation manages 35 community gardens across the 8 Wards of the District. The native plant gardens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the U.S. Botanical Garden (USBG) will serve as control sites. The collected data will help the research team understand which insect species are visiting which native and non-native plant species in an urban environment.