Can I start one on my own?
Let’s ask you a question first. Can you achieve long-lasting maintenance plans (20 years minimum, ideally 200 years)? If you can, let’s talk. To make a Pollinator Pathway, you will need commit to strong ecological and design standards, be fully funded or have a strategy in place for funding, and have well-developed long term maintenance plans.
We want to plant a garden. Is it a Pollinator Pathway?
Wouldn’t that make it so easy? But no, unfortunately not. Please try to protect the name “Pollinator Pathway” by calling your garden — your wonderful garden. The Pollinator Pathway is a systems-based project whose number one definition is that it connects two or more green spaces. The designation and title of “Pollinator Pathway” has a specific ecological basis, and using the name without abiding by the project’s intent undermines what the project is trying to achieve.
Lower case or upper case on Pollinator Pathway?
Upper case.
Is it a farming program?
Nope. The Pollinator Pathway is a design project that combines native plant standards with civic design, ownership buy-in, connectivity, and planning. A similar kind of project is an ‘ecological corridor,’ but there are key differences.
Is this project about saving honeybees?
The Pollinator Pathway fundamentally does not save anything. The use of the honeybee as pollinators is a symptom of simplification and fragmentation of landscape and our reliance on monocultural systems. While we love honeybees, we do not support them as a pollinator, and this is not a ‘honeybee project’.
Is this eco art, or an art installation?
Neither, it is based in design thinking. Please see the ‘How it Started’ page for a better understanding of the background of the project.
Can you help us design our project for free?
We don’t have that kind of funding to offer free design consulting…yet.