Pre-registration required.

Cost: $25 (25% off for BGA Members)

Pollinators of all stripes (pun intended) seemingly evaporate when the weather turns cold and the flowers disappear. Where do they go? Unless they are migrants like monarch butterflies, they never left; they’re just hiding really well in some stage of their life cycle.

And what about all those leaves? We like the leaves for shade and fall color, but they seem to become our dreaded enemy once they fall to the ground. If you want pollinators in the spring, keeping those leaves in your yard is essential.

In this class, Bee City USA founder, Phyllis Stiles, will explain how thinking of your yard as year-round pollinator habitat will make you see your winter yard in a whole new light. This class teaches the role tree leaves (and dead plant stems) play, and explores which trees to plant and how to have a tidy yard–with lots of fallen leaves!

Instructors.

Phyllis Stiles is founder and director emerita of Bee City USA®. The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign named Stiles “Pollinator Advocate of the Year for the United States” in 2015, the same year the sister program, Bee Campus USA, launched. To date, about 500 cities and campuses in 48 states have joined the Bee City and Bee Campus USA networks, which became initiatives of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in 2018. Stiles has made well over a hundred presentations and published countless newspaper and magazine articles about pollinator conservation across the nation. She spent her career at universities and non-profit organizations serving communities from West Africa to the Mississippi Delta, in fields ranging from natural resource and farmland protection to fundraising. Today, Stiles is as excited to inspire individuals and communities to create climate-resilient, connected pollinator habitat as she was when she launched Bee City USA in 2012.

Photo: Phyllis Stiles