Grace Amboka from Nairobi, Kenya, and Charling Chen, a recent Washington University graduate, share a common purpose: Saving bees and other pollinators and growing more fruit and vegetables.
Concerned about the world crisis of declining bee populations, they and 26 other college students are designing and helping plant pollinator-friendly gardens in Florissant, Nairobi and Tucson, Ariz. Across continents and cultures, they say, they hope to increase public awareness about the importance of hazards facing bees and the need for human intervention to help.
“Most people don’t connect the micro-scale of the bee to plants and then to the food on their dinner tables,” Chen said.
With fewer bees to pollinate flowers and vegetables, crops and food production are adversely affected.
The year-long program is called PAUSE, Pollinators/Art/Urban Agriculture/Society/and the Environment. It’s part cultural “cross-pollination,” part ecological mission and part arts and garden design. In addition to the students, the Kenyan group includes scientists from the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi. The American staff and experts come from the St. Louis Zoo and Tohono Chul Park in Tucson.
Increasing the number of native pollinators is so important to the St. Louis Zoo that it has its own Wildcare Institute Center for Native Pollinator Conservation. Ed Spevak, Curator of Invertebrates, is the center’s director and is coordinating the project here.
On June 18, the Zoo will offer the public a “Bee Thankful” dinner featuring food made possible by bees and other pollinators. The PAUSE students will speak at the event, part of “Pollinator Week.”
Next week, Chen, Spevak, Brittany Buckles, a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and Mary Brong, a graphic designer with the Zoo, will travel to Nairobi to see the pollinator garden there.
Last month, Spevak and a Kenyan group traveled to the Tucson garden. Then, the Kenyans stayed a week in St. Louis to help plant the Florissant garden.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has contributed about $86,000 to the $200,000 cost of the one-year program. The remaining costs are shared by the Zoo and its project co-sponsors in Kenya and Tucson.
Spevak hopes the students will carry the message of the importance of pollinators to the community and especially to their generation.
“We want this — the Florissant garden — to become a model for other sites around St. Louis,” Spevak said. “We want to show others how you can develop and design a community garden or even a park that is pollinator-friendly and have benefits for local communities and beyond. Pollinators are incredibly important for all of our survival.”
To help pollinators survive, the St. Louis students are building a large two-flower sculpture they designed for the Florissant garden. It will used by bees for a nesting habitat. Colorful asters, sunflowers, cup plants and cone flowers also will draw and retain them.
In addition to Chen and Buckles, other participants are: Aaron Mann, an art education student at UMSL, Anna Villanyi, a Washington University communication design and anthropology major, Bingbin Zhou, a graduate student in architecture at Washington University, Trincy Nyswonger, a wildlife biology major at Lewis and Clark Community College, Heather Richardson, an anthropology major at SIUE, Brianna Hamann, a speech communication major at SIUE, Julia Gabbert, a Webster University student in journalism and environmental studies, and Shannon Slade, an architecture major at Washington University.
“Some people are fearful of bees but they’re so essential for our food,” Buckles said.
Other Missouri pollinators they hope to attract to the Florissant garden are butterflies, flies and ruby-throated hummingbirds.
The Florissant garden, at 601 St. Charles Street, by Old St. Ferdinand Shrine, now serves as Florissant’s Community Garden. Under PAUSES’ plans, it will be expanded to cover 3.5 acres.
Once completed, it will offer visitors a chance to stroll through prairie habitat, a wildflower walk, historic and Native American gardens and an orchard. A shared garden for local food banks will feed the poor and there will be raised beds for people using wheelchairs.
PAUSE is working with the city of Florissant, the Florissant Community Garden Club and Gateway Greening, which promotes community urban gardens, and expects to bring in the Missouri Prairie Foundation. Florissant gardeners are doing the day-to-day work on the garden.
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