July 2025 Update

July 2025 Update

Our yards can be wildlife corridors.  Please see the article at the bottom of this update and share as widely as possible. 

Outreach of the month: Create a Pollinator Pathway!

You may not notice one sign, but if you see the same sign at one house after another along a street, you’ll probably look to see what it says! This project is designed to be an entrance-level program for neighbors who might not yet think of themselves as environmentalists or native plant enthusiasts. It asks very little of people - they just need to have at least one native tree or a pollinator garden on their property, and to refrain from killing off the pollinators with mosquito or tick spraying. 

You can organize this on your own in your neighborhood simply by asking people, or you could make more of a project out of it by recruiting others to help and distributing mosquito buckets or native plants. You could join with other neighborhoods, schools, or places of worship to extend the pathway to a park. You could bring along the kids to bat their eyes at grumpy neighbors.  If enough of us organize our communities, maybe together we can turn the tide on the mosquito spraying disaster.

Upcoming events

• July 12 Native Plant Walk: Planting for Wildlife. Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.

• July 31 Urban Forest Roundtable. Trees Virginia

Partner of  the Month: Extension Master Gardeners were founding members of the Plant NOVA Natives campaign. They are trained volunteer educators who serve their communities by encouraging and promoting researched-based gardening practices. There are five Master Gardener units in Northern Virginia: Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia (serving Arlington and Alexandria), Green Spring Master Gardeners, and Loudoun, Fairfax, and Prince William Master Gardeners. All of them engage deeply with the community, offering countless hours of advice and demonstrations to the region. Many of the volunteers who label the native plants in conventional garden centers across the region are Master Gardeners.

Volunteers needed for tabling events

Please see our Sign-Up Genius if you could staff a table to tell people about native plants.

• 8/2 Frying Pan Park

• 8/24 Oakton Day

• 9/28 Runnymede Park, Herndon

Volunteers needed for Facebook

If you can help manage the Plant NOVA Natives Facebook page, please email plantnovanatives@gmail.com. Very easy job, but important! Social media is where most people learn about native plants.

Report your native tree and shrub plantings

Please help Northern Virginia meet its tree-planting obligations by reporting your tree and shrub plantings here. So far 19,079 have been reported!

Report your tree rescues

Millions of trees in Northern Virginia are at risk from invasive non-native vines. You can help by saving them on your own land or by volunteering on public land. (Plant NOVA Natives/Plant NOVA Trees only does educational outreach, so all this work is done under the auspices of our partnering organizations or other landowners.). Since 2021, 19,117 tree rescues have been reported in Northern Virginia.Learn more and add your report here.  

Next Steering Committee meeting – July 24, 10am-noon via videoconferencing. All are welcome. Check our Event Calendar for future meetings.

This month’s newsletter articles to share. For social media, please use this link. 

Pollinator Pathways: Connecting your yard to the bigger picture

Imagine the world as it once was. Verdant forests, buzzing meadows, and numerous other natural areas were immense, whole, and pulsing with life. Over time, human activity emerged and carved the natural world into disconnected, even isolated parts. Ecologists refer to this process as habitat fragmentation. You can see it in urban settings where green parks are biological islands surrounded by buildings and concrete roads. You can see it in rural settings where agriculture simplifies ecosystems and amplifies the populations of only certain insects to the detriment of others. You can see it in suburban settings where developments destroy natural habitats and where landscapes are “replaced” with all non-native species.  

Large and mostly undisturbed ecosystems can still be found, of course, especially in our beloved national parks and forests. But even they are distant from each other, understaffed, and too small in total acreage to sustain the biodiversity of the continent. Any solution to the problem of habitat fragmentation and the resulting loss of biodiversity, therefore, must be found right here among the throng of human life – where we live, work and play.

Is it possible to reconnect isolated fragments in our urban, suburban, and rural settings to benefit pollinators and the creatures that depend upon them? That was the question that sparked the “pollinator pathway” concept in 2007 by Sarah Bergmann, an artist living in Seattle. As part of a social and ecological project, she envisioned and described a network of native gardens that could create a “pathway” to support pollinators. This core idea led to the creation of a nonprofit – Pollinator Pathway – by Donna Merrill, a conservationist from Wilton, Connecticut, in 2017. Since then, the group has helped inspire and launch a national movement.

The idea is a powerful one. Anybody can take part, even at a novice level. There are very few barriers to participation. If all you have is one native tree or a  small pollinator garden – preferably one with some native plants – it’s a start, and you can build from there.  

The main goal of a pollinator pathway is to reinstate connectivity between several small but healthy habitats. A single native tree can support bees and other pollinators as much if not more than a flower garden. Building a pollinator pathway on your street, for example, may include adding a new native tree or two, or creating new healthy gardens on communal grounds or private property as “stepping stones” along the way. It may include the expansion of existing native plant areas. Removal of invasives that disrupt the pathway will certainly be part of the plan, along with pledges to avoid all broadcast pesticides including mosquito and tick sprays. Only unpoisoned ecosystems can be included in the work.

Many communities across America are already building pollinator pathways and proving the concept. You can recruit participants on your own, or have fun working with like-minded people to muster engagement. Hold a kick-off meeting to build some early momentum. Don’t over plan. Take some early action, starting with 1 or 2 easy planting projects, then see where it takes you.  

On a new webpage just launched by Plant NOVA Natives you will find some handy tools to help you build a pollinator pathway in your neighborhood or community. They include:

• A tip sheet for pollinator pathway organizers

• Instructions for ordering medallion signs that will be delivered to your house from Plant NOVA Natives for you and your participants. If you are in Northern Virginia, we will have the sign company mail you the first five for free.

• Ideas for how to pitch the idea to the folks you want to engage

• Pollinator Pathway handouts to leave with your neighbor. 

Join the movement! Let’s work with our neighbors and friends to connect the fragments, rebuild some beneficial habitats, and heal the everyday ecosystems that surround us. Their resilience is astonishing. New life, activity, and hope will certainly emerge, along with a new joy in being part of something much bigger than our own backyards.