If you ask second-graders Tad Cassady and Evelyn Menzhuber, a giant pile of mulch and bulbs to plant is the best way to celebrate Earth Day.
“It helps the Earth and it’s going to be lots of fun,” Tad exclaimed.
“I like to get dirty!” Evelyn chimed in. “It’s earth so I like to put my hands in it.”
The Garlough Environmental Magnet School students and their classmates were pumped up Friday, technically the day before the 47th Earth Day celebration, to get into the fields around their West St. Paul magnet school. The planting was part of a new effort by leaders of West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan schools to become, they believe, Minnesota’s first pollinator-friendly school district.
“We are going to plant all these different things and it’s going to help pollinators,” Tad explained.
Pollinators — like bees, butterflies and hummingbirds — face growing problems from habitat loss, insecticides and pesticides. Much of the world’s food supply relies on pollination, so an increasing number of people and community institutions are stepping in to help.
There are simple steps to take to become more friendly to pollinators, said Cindy Johnson, a master gardener with the University of Minnesota extension office in Dakota County. They include planting native species, avoiding invasive plants, reducing or eliminating the use of chemicals, and delaying early-season mowing.
“It is thinking about your landscape differently than in the past,” Cindy Johnson said. “It’s about thinking of your landscape as an ecosystem.”
At Garlough and the West St. Paul district’s seven others schools, the changes will start slowly by installing native plants, minimizing insecticides and pesticides, and leaving some fields to be mowed later in the spring or not at all. So if the grass at the district’s schools looks a little untidy, it’s not because the grounds crew is slacking off.
The transition won’t just help struggling pollinators but will also be a learning tool for students from kindergarten through high school. Next year, Garlough students will begin studying pollinators more closely, and they’ll have a living laboratory at their school.
Dawn Thissen, a second-grade teacher, said projects like these are a perfect way for students to take a more inquisitive and discovery-based approach to their learning by exploring the new habitat and the organisms that call it home.
“It teaches them to be leaders instead of followers,” Thissen said.
Lisa Johnson, the district’s sustainability manager who also coordinates the LIVEGREEN program, said becoming pollinator-friendly is just the district’s latest move to be a better ecological steward and lessen its environmental footprint. Schools have also worked to improve energy efficiency and reduce waste through composting.
The West St. Paul district followed in the footsteps of the city of Mendota Heights, which became pollinator-friendly in 2015. Johnson hopes more schools, cities and other institutions will consider making the move.
“When you look at the metro area and all the parking lots and green space, if all of those places turned into pollinator-friendly areas, bees would have a better chance,” Lisa Johnson said.