Restoring Pollinator Gardens and Habitats
Wildflower gardens are beautiful, very resilient in their native land, and are inexpensive and easy to cultivate and maintain. They are also greatly needed now to help secure the survival of butterflies, native bees, moths and many other pollinators. This crisis is due to increased pesticide use, parasites, climate change and habitat loss.
The Wildflower Pollinator Project is dedicated to helping educate others about this serious worldwide decline in pollinator populations and to provide information, resources, and methods to help restore wildflower gardens and habitats. While there is work to do in creating or expanding larger habitats, no garden is too small to be of help in this crisis.
Three Ways are offered by the project to help in the creation of wildflower gardens using simple and inexpensive methods: Wildflower Nursey Kits, Seed Stratification, and Transplanting.
Wildflower Nursery Kits were developed by horticulturists who recognized and acted to address this increasingly urgent decline in pollinator populations by developing a simple and inexpensive gardening method. Kits protect wildflower seeds from being eaten, save them from the damaging effects of global warming, and because seeds can be densely sown in pots, they also produce an abundant supply of wildflower seedlings.
Kits are composed of pots, 
a variety of wildflower seeds, and a wooden frame covered on one side on one side with garden mesh.
They supply protection from global warming, as the gardener will wait until early January when the freezing temperatures of winter have stabilized, before taking them outside. Enclosing the seeded pots in a mesh covered wooden frame will protect them from being eaten by birds and rodents. Kits can be purchased from the Project, or you can DIY.
Seed Stratification is a simple method where perennial wildflower seeds are combined with sand or vermiculite, moistened, put in a plastic bag and keep in a refrigerator for 3 to 4 months before sown outside in Spring. This method will cause the seeds to germinate quickly. For more detailed information, visit the American Meadows Website. https://www.americanmeadows.com/content/wildflowers/how-to/cold-stratify-seeds, or contact Jane.
Transplanting of mature wildflower plants into an existing garden or prepared plot, can purchased from the Project at a reasonable price. Wildflowers can be transplanted in both the Spring and Fall, when the plants are not in bloom.
Wildflowers The Wildflower seeds, seedling, and mature plants that are available from the project are a handful of ones found to be well loved by pollinators; Bee Balm, both wild Bergamot and Monarda fistulosa, Lavender Hyssop, Echinacea, Butterfly Weed, Black-eyed Susan, Blazing Star, Coreopsis, Phlox, Golden Rod, and Aster.
The Project has created five wildflower pollinator gardens in Vermont; at the Putney Town Hall, beside the deck at the Putney Co-op, the Putney Community Gardens, Putney Central School, and next to the library in Westminster West.
The Project’s founder, Jane Collister, also has extensive gardens at her home in Westminster West, where she cultivates wildflowers. All of these gardens are used to supply the Project with mature wildflowers to transplant to local gardens.
Please contact Jane for more information at janecollister3@gmail.com 
