Growing the future

Pollinator Census

The Great Southeast Pollinator Census

Bjutterfly Census

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

Girl Scout Census

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

472842971_901924902099824_7027548768778984272_n

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

Girl Scout Census1

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

467210024_868601015432213_1109601026212351627_n
Pollinator Census Group

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

Pollinator Census Group2

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

AdobeStock_1177695529

Project name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc elementum facilisis cursus.

Read more

Join The Count

On Saturday, August 24th, the Community Garden@Snellville, in partnership with Girl Scouts from throughout the Brookwood Cluster under the leadership of Nicole Tilford, participated in the Great Southeast Pollinator Census, a citizen science project established by the University of Georgia. The census is designed for citizens of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida of all ages. The pilot project launched in 2017 with 50 gardens and has grown every year since. The project is simple enough for anyone to pick up some basic entomology, get involved, and make a difference for pollinator conservation. The project is guided by three primary objectives: to create sustainable pollinators habitats; to enhance the entomological knowledge of citizens and to generate valuable data about our pollinator population.

This year’s event at the Community Garden@Snellville focused on educating students about pollinators and observing their behaviors. The Girl Scouts were working towards earning their Think Like a Citizen Scientist Journey, which is an official badge program designed to teach girls how to think like a scientist and participate in real science projects. Throughout the event, the girls engaged in games aimed at teaching the different types of pollinators being observed, sharpened their observation skills, learned about issues affecting pollinators, and developed a take action plan to help with these issues. A total of 25 students joined in, each choosing a pollinator plant to monitor and counting the number of pollinators that visited it during the 15-minute observation period. There were also six adults who joined in, for a total of 31 participants.

Most students observed Zinnia flowers, but some chose to observe Garlic Chives, Marigolds, Mexican Sunflowers, Basil, Purple Woodsage, and Scarlet Rosemallow. Students discovered that butterflies and moths loved Zinnia plants. They would visit a plant, leave, and come back over and over again. Carpenter bees, on the other hand, preferred Garlic Chives. Altogether, students counted over 3000 times that pollinators landed on different plants throughout the garden. The students had a great time learning about pollinators and watching them in action.

We wish to express our gratitude to our fellow community garden Master Gardeners, Kathleen Keyes, Karen Hanley, and Kathy Pittman for their commitment and effort in facilitating community education initiatives like these and ensuring their successful implementation. Should you have any projects, programs, or organizations that could benefit from our support, please feel free to contact a member of our Greenhouse Management Team. For further details, kindly visit our website at Community Garden@Snellville.com

A History of the Census from Project Coordinator Becky Griffin

The Great Southeast Pollinator Census was started in response to my work in community and school gardens. I was meeting gardeners who knew about soil health and plant selection but, were lacking knowledge about insect ecosystems, especially pollinators. At the same time, I found that teachers were not usually trained in entomology so they were unlikely to educate their students about the insects they were finding in their school gardens.

A pilot project was launched in 2017 and repeated in 2018. The pilot project included 50 gardens. This allowed us to refine the counting criteria and to determine the needs of the participants to successfully participate in the project. We wanted the project to be easy enough for anyone to learn some basic entomology and participate while at the same time ensure that we were generating useful data. We met with statisticians as well as researchers.

We defined three goals of the project:

1. To create sustainable pollinator habitat by educating gardeners about using plants that provide nutrition for our pollinators while handling our summer droughts and do not have disease or pest insect pressure.

2. To increase the entomological literacy of our citizens. As I mentioned to one teacher, we want students to go from “oooo, it’s a bug” to “look at the tarsal claw on that bee!”

3. To generate useful data about our pollinator populations, so we can begin to spot trends and see how pollinator populations are affected by weather and how honey bees influence native bee populations.

The first statewide Great Georgia Pollinator Census was in August of 2019. Over 4,000 people participated.

During 2020, COVID regulations allowed us to be creative and we encouraged families to count at home. We provided online training through webinars. Family and Consumer Science agents contributed recipes featuring foods needing pollinators, like watermelon salsa. These were published through social media, our website, and newsletter.

In 2021, almost 6,000 participants recorded data.

In 2022, South Carolina joined the Census through the efforts of Clemson University.

In 2023, North Carolina joined the Census through North Carolina A&T.

I’m looking forward to the future growth.

– Becky Griffin, project coordinator