Showing up for the Bees! Pollinator Garden Weeding

Thursday night four of us headed out to a pollinator garden in Bettendorf and got to work. The weather was perfect and honestly it made the whole thing feel exactly like it should. Just four people, some gloves, and a lot of invasive plants that needed to come out.

Before we got started Spencer walked us through what we were actually there to protect. Turns out bees are a lot more interesting than most people give them credit for. Not all of them live in hives. Some burrow into the ground, some take over holes left behind by other animals, and some lay their eggs directly inside the hollow stalks of plants. Which means the way you maintain a garden actually matters a lot more than just pulling weeds.

Pollinator gardens are spaces designed to give bees, butterflies, and other pollinators a place to feed and thrive. The problem is that invasive plants don't care about that. They move in, crowd out the flowers and plants that pollinators actually need, and slowly choke the whole thing out. Left alone long enough the garden stops doing its job.

So we pulled them out. All of them. We also cleared out some trash that had made its way in because apparently people still do that.

For four people we got a lot done. The garden looks like it can actually breathe again and the plants that matter, the ones the bees are counting on, have room to grow now.

This is the kind of thing we want Farmers Market Club to be about. Showing up, doing the work, and leaving things better than we found them. The clothes we make are built with that same mindset. Nothing wasted, nothing careless.