Community Garden Pollinator Plant Giveaway Scheduled for Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, November 1

Madison, NJ – October 20, 2020 – To help make Madison pollinator friendly, the Community Garden has grown milkweed, blue lobelia, wild bergamot and 10 types of native perennial plants. Madison residents are invited to dig up two plants (for free) on Saturday., October 24 and Sunday, November 1 from 1 to 5 pm.

The Community Garden’s native plant varieties are listed at tinyurl.com/pollinatorgiveaway. The time slot sheet is available at tinyurl.com/fallpollinators. Reservations and masks are required. Tools will be provided. Residents must bring their own plant containers (plastic cups or bags with garden soil will work). Extra plant containers will be gladly accepted for future pollinator plant giveaways.

“For our giveaway, we planted a fifty-foot bed with seeds from our pollinator meadows,” says Stephen McAuliffe, chair of the Community Garden Advisory Committee. “Joan Maccari of the Madison Environmental Commission, along with volunteers from the Rutgers Master Gardener’s Program. helped harvest the seeds. Alice Wade of the Garden Club of Madison also helped us with on cultivation,” continued McAuliffe.

Pollinator plants are an essential part of an eco-system. McAuliffe explains that moths and butterflies need specific host plants to lay their eggs and feed their caterpillars. “Monarch butterflies, will only lay their eggs on milkweed,” he says.

“I’m so inspired by our green teams in Madison,” says Maureen Byrne, Borough Council liaison to the Community Garden Advisory Committee and the Madison Environmental Commission. “If all of us add milkweed and other pollinator plants to our yards, we can help mitigate the habitat loss that we all watch happen every day.”

For questions, contact MEC@rosenet.org 

A PDF of the release can be found here.