When Hurricane Michael came through our area, it destroyed tens of thousands of trees along with everything else. As we’ve been assessing people’s yards for bee sanctuaries, we’ve been getting many requests for helping them find native trees and shrubs to replace those that have been lost to recreate the wildlife habitats that were lost.
Because of this, we’ve decided to research and then educate kids and their parents on what types of native trees and shrubs are best for them to use and provide at least one tree for every yard that invites us to assess them.
Due to Covid shelter in place regulations, it was difficult to get to houses to assess them for bee sanctuaries and provide trees however, we planted 13 trees. We originally thought that we would plant pine trees but Seraphina felt strongly that we provide a flowering tree option to provide nectar for our pollinator friends. We decided to survey three upcoming house owners to see which type of tree they preferred and all 3 chose a smaller, flowering tree due to fears of house damage during possible future hurricanes. We've set up an educational session about native trees and plant life in our area with Mark Melvin from the Education department at The Jones Center for the project members when we are able to return to normal activities. For now, we researched native flowering trees and then consulted with Mark to confirm that Tulip Poplar trees would be a good fit for this project.
Through this project we learned to be adaptable both with the time line and with which actual trees to use based on homeowner preference.
If we do this project again, we will do it earlier in the year as the optimal tree planting time for our area is December through March.
So far, our favorite part of the project has been researching and deciding which trees to use to also help pollinators.
There are so many native trees in every area so it's best to narrow it down with other categories such as optimal size and purpose.
