Healthy Yards Monroe is a Color Your Community Green Campaign in Brighton, Fairport, Irondequoit, Henrietta, Penfield, and Pittsford. The Color Your Community Green groups advance climate solutions at the municipal and neighborhood levels and are an outgrowth of the Climate Solutions Accelerator which is a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and facilitating a large-scale climate mobilization in the nine county Genesee-Finger Lakes region.
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The Healthy Yards Concept and Goals are to encourage residents to restore biodiversity, ecological health, and beauty by converting some of their lawn area to NY native, pollinator-attractive plants. In addition, we act to communicate with our town and county officials to “connect” with us by establishing high-quality pollinator habitats on town and county land. The ultimate goal is to create a Pollinator Pathway through Monroe County with pollinator areas not more than a half mile apart, which is the flying distance of our native bees.
Healthy Yards Guidelines to a high-quality pollinator habitat include advice from Doug Tallamy (Nature’s Best Hope). A successful garden should contain primarily native species (Latin names)-about 70%; include keystone trees like oak, birch, and cherries and perennial flowers- goldenrod and asters; no pesticides; follow fall, winter, and spring non-clean up suggestions. More information and links are provided at: colorpittsfordgreen.org by click on Campaigns and then Healthy Yards
We ask you to register your native garden on the CPG website to contribute data towards the goal of connectivity of native plant gardens in our communities.
" Chances are you have never thought of your garden, indeed, of all of the space on your property—as a wildlife preserve that represents the last opportunity we have for sustaining plants and animals that were once common throughout the U.S. That is exactly the role our suburban landscapes are now playing, and will play even more critically in the near future - Gardening for Life. Written by Doug Tallamy
This post was written by Mary Moore