Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Developing Sustainable Pollinator Gardens for Habitat, Water Conservation, and Education
EPA Grant Number: SV839357Title: Developing Sustainable Pollinator Gardens for Habitat, Water Conservation, and Education
Investigators: Maier, Camelia , Elrod, Diana , Sahlin, Claire , Thallapareddy, Charitha , Floyd, Caitlyn , Matewe, Chelsea , Pisquiy, Sarah , Meza, Elizabeth , Dizdarevic, Arnela , Ngo, Nguyen , Zidermanis, Adina , Mahabub, Rumpa Mafia , Hills, Morgan , Ware, I’Ceyonna
Institution: Texas Woman's University
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: II
Project Period: March 1, 2018 through February 29, 2020 (Extended to February 28, 2022)
Project Amount: $74,932
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet - Phase 2 (2017) Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Awards , Sustainable and Healthy Communities , P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources
Objective:
The human society depends on pollinators for food production. The loss of floral resources in urban and agricultural landscapes is a prominent and much-discussed driver of pollinator decline. One of the main objectives of the project is to educate students, partners and surrounding communities on sustainability practices, habitat restoration and native pollinator conservation by initiating and maintaining urban pollinator gardens. There is evidence that urban areas can support higher populations of some pollinators than farmland and also boost bee numbers in adjacent farmland.
The other objective was to study the plant-pollinator interactions through student and faculty projects that could provide science-based advice to land managers and policy makers for the purpose of crop improvement and biodiversity increase.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
One of the long-term projected outcomes of the project was to obtain a sustainable garden complex for the purpose of increasing stewardship of recruited students and other target audiences. Phase II funding has been used for developing a second, much larger garden (5,000 sq. ft.) in addition to a pilot garden sponsored by phase I funding, for education and outreach activities for sustainability and research projects. We have accomplished all outcomes of the project. The garden infrastructure was completed on February 7, 2020 and the last additions, such as 6 benches, a paver brick path to one of the benches, an arbor for Passionflower vine, plant signage, two standalone information centers and signage for the outdoor classroom were completed between 2021-22.
Planting was initially completed by June 2020 with more maintenance planting going on continuously. Research on the plant-pollinator interactions continued for the remaining of 2021-22. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed and slowed down the work on the project and we obtained one-year extension. However, even during the pandemic, we continued to have regular garden workdays with recruited students and staff to educate them and increase their skills in becoming stewards of sustainability practices in restoring habitats for pollinators. These workdays followed the CDC and the TWU pandemic guidelines, thus engaging less participants (social distancing) and making sure all wore masks. We also continued working on educational materials for dissemination to target audience in our communities. Thus, we achieved the outcomes of the first two outputs in our logic model of project outputs and outcomes (see table below) in that we have a sustainable garden complex that provides training to the university and at-large communities to increase the civic responsibility for habitat preservation, restoration, and environmental protection (especially in terms of water conservation and pollution reduction from fertilizers since the garden is populated with native plants).
Outputs | Outcomes | Outcomes | Outcomes |
Short-term | Medium-term | Long-term | |
Recruitment of students and other target audience | Phase I garden complex | Phase II garden complex | Obtaining sustainable garden complex Increased stewardship |
2. Training | Increasing skills in becoming stewards of pollinator habitats | Increasing skills in becoming stewards of pollinator habitats | Civic responsibility for habitat preservation, restoration and environmental protection (water conservations and pollution reduction) |
3. Workshops and outreach | Increased access to environmental education and resources and increased environmental knowledge Recruit audience | Increased ability to think critically about environmental issues. Students and community start making decisions to improve their environment. Initiation of pollinator habitats | Improved environmental literacy Established partners’ pollinator habitats |
4. Educational materials for courses and other target audience | Brochures Before and after videos of gardens Initiate a guide to transform the lawn to pollinator habitat | Poster presentations of successful activities to the community at local (Poster Session at the Mall), regional and national meetings Complete the guide | Disseminate guide |
5. Website/Database of plant-pollinator interactions | Starting a website Initiating the database | Update website and database | Update website and complete database |
6. Conferences and presentations of research results | Gather data | Gather data Poster presentations at scientific meetings Prepare manuscripts for publication | Dissemination of scientific information and successful activities to be used by land managers and policy makers |
7. Assessment of learning | Initiate rubrics and surveys Use QEP rubrics for QEP courses | Assessment of actions to improve environment; measuring success | Measuring partners’ success |
We recruited students, faculty, staff and community partners to participate in educational workdays/workshops. Thus, sustainable education resulting in increased environmental knowledge and literacy has been provided year around. Student leaders along with faculty designed educational brochures and a garden business card we used in all our outreach activities and posted them in the educational centers in the garden. The pollinator garden provided students and community partners with opportunities to ‘learn by doing’, increasing their skills in becoming stewards of pollinator habitats and making decisions to improve their environment. Plants grown by our students were donated to individuals (students, staff, faculty and community) for own garden initiation. Although under pandemic restrictions, we managed to fulfil some outreach activities recruiting more audience in the third year of the project and resulting in students and community partners starting making decisions to improve the environment by building their own pollinator gardens or landscaping with native plants preferred by pollinators.
Organizations and private people from the North Texas community started reaching to us for guidance in creating their own butterfly gardens. Assistance was provided in February 2020 to the Pilot Knob Rotary Club of Denton to design a landscaping plan for a Monarch butterfly waystation at the Denton Village of the Good Samaritan Society. Texas Association of Master Gardeners, who were looking at hosting their 2021 annual conference in Denton, contacted us to discuss organizing educational garden tours since ‘the TWU butterfly garden came up as a possible option and there seems to be a lot of interest’. Unfortunately, that conference was transformed into a virtual conference.
A virtual tour of the TWU garden was presented at the 40th anniversary celebration Symposium of the Native Plant Society of Texas (NPSOT) in October 2020. Also, in 2020, the Benjamin Lyon DAR Chapter in Denton invited us to present tips for sustainable pollinator gardens to their members who were very interested in initiating their own gardens. Plans were developed in 2020 through 2022 along with Keep Denton Beautiful for ways to celebrate Arbor Day at the City’s annual Redbud Festival. Denton being known as the Redbud Capital of Texas, we made plans to provide “Redbud Routes” through the campus and our garden where residents could enjoy the spring blossoms on the Redbud trees and in our garden, thus providing a way for people to get outdoors and enjoy nature during the pandemic. All these examples are testimony of the success of our project both in terms of obtaining sustainable gardens and offering environmental education and resources for increasing environmental literacy, knowledge and desire to improve the environment for the good of the people, prosperity and the planet.
Educational brochures, videos of pollinators interacting with native plants in the garden, guidelines of transforming lawns into urban pollinator gardens were used not only for outreach activities, but for or courses as well. Several courses made use of the outdoor classroom at the garden to enhance sustainability, restoration and conservation education of our students and other visiting groups (such as boy scouts and middle school students).
A collaboration with the university’s Arts Division resulted in work on building a butterfly garden guide under the form of a children’s book which will be completed in August 2022, disseminated on the garden’s website first before we go to print.
Plant-pollinator projects by students enrolled in plant biology and ecology courses as well and projects of the student leaders have been presented at a poster session at the Denton Mall for the community, but also at the TWU Student Arts and Research Symposium, as shown in the publication list. We continue gathering data from observations of plant-pollinator interactions for publications in peer-review journals.
The database of native plant-pollinator interactions continued to be developed. Plant biology and ecology students were involved in making observations in the garden, using a scanning electron microscope to identify pollen on insects and thus visited plants in the garden, and using iNaturalist to identify pollinators. The project entitled ‘Pioneer Biodiversity Project’ on iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pioneer-biodiversity-project) has currently 5,635 observations of 691 species by 269 students. The goal of this project is to observe and document biodiversity on our campus while participating in a greater citizen science project. The iNaturalist observation data will be added to the database of native plant-pollinator interactions. Pollen from all plants in the garden have been studied by electron microscopy and micrographs will be added to the TWU Herbarium database, thus allowing environmentalists and other scientists access to these data. A database of seeds of native plants in the garden has been initiated to provide more information for consumers on the desired plants by certain pollinators (Monarch butterfly likes Mistflower and Frostweed the best for nectar, for examples).
The garden has its own website, which is continuously updated with new information, videos and garden photos. The garden’s Facebook page, is updated often as well, as promotional social media venue for our garden. The TWU garden became well known in the North Texas community as a result of our efforts to disseminate our mission and activities. The garden received two Business Yard of the Month awards from the City of Denton’s Keep Denton Beautiful program in 2020 and 2021. Our graduates use the gardens for graduation photos and even a wedding took place in our garden. Articles about the garden were published not only in Inside TWU, a weekly newsletter for faculty and staff, but also in the TWU Chancellor's April 2020 external audience newsletter that reaches 55K people.
Assessment activities used rubrics already established for the ‘learn-by-doing’ courses (plant biology and ecology), as well as simple questionnaires for visitors and students in other courses. As a measure of partners’ success, we visit their pollinator gardens and we report that all gardens we helped initiate are established, contributing to increase of pollinator populations and sustainability education of communities. We will continue recruiting community partners for establishing new urban pollinator gardens.
Conclusions:
Quantifiable benefits to people, prosperity, and the planet (estimated or actual)
The following is a list of quantifiable benefits to people, prosperity, and the planet for the three years of the grant period:
- 575 TWU students have been recruited and educated on sustainability and conservation issues; 54 of students have belonged to 6 student organizations that adopted plots in the pollinator gardens;
- The outdoor classroom has been used routinely for at least 5 courses: Plant biology, Ecology, University 101, Principles of Biology, Graphic Design;
- An average of 4 organized visits from per year by the larger community outside the university have been scheduled (Boy Scouts, The Bettye Myers middle school in Denton, City of Denton, Preston Place Retirement Community in Plano, Texas, Trinity Forks Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas, Bring Back Monarchs program leaders of the Native Plant Society of Texas, Denton County Master Gardeners, etc.). Unorganized visits to the gardens by students, faculty, staff, and outside community were several per day.
- Visitors enjoy and learn from the 95 native plant species planted in the gardens as well as the informative-designed plant signage showing photos of the pollinators that benefit from each plant species.
- One wedding, several birthday parties/year, graduation photo parties at the end of each semester, and almost everyday lunch parties of TWU and outside community members has taken place at the phase II garden.
- People learned from our gardening practices, improve their knowledge of native plants and pollinators. Here are recommendations we made to people and businesses/organizations based on our own experience in building our gardens:
- Use of expanded shale for areas prone to droughts and having heavy clay soils.
- Use of only native plants to increase native populations of pollinators; native plants do not need fertilizers and heavy irrigation. People could save money using native plants and at the same time help increase pollinator populations.
- Use native plants that bloom sequentially to support pollinators from spring to late fall in our area (northcentral Texas); For Monarchs we recommend planting Mistflowers, Purple Coneflowers, and Frostweed nectar in our area since they like the nectar in these plant species the best.
- We recommend farmers to plant patches of native wild flowers along their farms and orchards to attract pollinators for their crop plants and obtain better crops while supporting populations of native pollinators at the same time.
- The way stations for Monarch butterflies in our gardens contain three different species of milkweed that we recommend to people for best results in increasing the Monarchs’ population by offering food and reproductive development habitat.
- A rainwater system built at one of the gardens serves as a model for use of rainwater.
- We helped build at least one big pollinator garden per year (Wheeler House for single mothers with children, Denton Village of the Good Samaritan Society, and Park Commissions at City of Denton and City of Oak Point) and donated native plants to approximately 60 students, faculty, staff, and outside community members for their own gardens.
- 113 student research projects have been developed during the three years of the grant award, of which 5 were also benefiting from an NFS -PRIME internship to the respective students, and one entitled "Native Plant-Pollinator Interactions in Urban Environments" was awarded the Ann Miller Gonzalez Research Grant for Graduate Students by the Native Plant Society of Texas.
Qualitative benefits to people, prosperity, and the planet
- The butterfly gardens have become a landmark on the TWU Denton campus. The gardens provide educational and learning opportunities and a relaxation spot on campus to reduce stress and anxiety.
- Increase in pollinator knowledge, sustainability and conservation education through our awareness campaigns (outreach, garden website and Facebook page, brochures), educational centers in the gardens, outdoor classroom, interpretive plant signage enhanced people’s desire to build own pollinator gardens and do more for the conservation of pollinator populations.
- The pollinator garden provided students with opportunities to ‘learn by doing’, increasing their skills in becoming stewards of pollinator habitats. Our sustainable garden complex provides training to the university and at-large communities to increase the civic responsibility for habitat preservation, restoration, and environmental protection (especially in terms of water conservation and pollution reduction from fertilizers since the garden is populated with native plants).
- We see a significant increase in number pollinators of different species and especially native bees and Monarchs in our gardens as compared to other areas of the campus, which prove that creating urban gardens help conserve pollinator populations.
- The research data dissemination along with the scientific publications and guide book (still in working progress) will inform people, improve their environmental literary, civic responsibility for habitat preservation, restoration and environmental protection and could be used by land managers and policy makers for the benefit of the people, prosperity, and the planet.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 30 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
Sustainability, urban native garden, pollinator, Monarch butterfly, plant-pollinator interactions, education, outreach, biodiversity; phenology, conservationRelevant Websites:
The Dr. Bettye Myers Butterfly Garden Exit
Biology Department, Herbarium and Butterfly Garden Exit
Facebook, Texas Woman’s University Butterfly Garden Exit
Virtual tour of the TWU Butterfly Gardens, Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractP3 Phase I:
Sustainable Pollinator Gardens for Habitat and Education | Final ReportThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
- 2020 Progress Report
- 2019 Progress Report
- 2018 Progress Report
- Original Abstract
- P3 Phase I | Final Report