The New Paltz Middle School Climate Club has received an Ecological Restoration Grant from Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley. The club plans to use the $4,787 in funding to create three types of pollinator gardens at the middle school.
Two members of the Climate Club and their faculty advisors revealed their plans during a meeting of the New Paltz Central School District’s Board of Education last week, explaining the purpose of a pollinator garden and how it will come together on campus.
“Many pollinator populations are in decline due to loss of a suitable habitat for feeing and nesting,” said a student named Madrone. “(With the gardens) pollinators won’t have to fly as far to find food.”
Pollinators include everything from birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, bees, wasps and small animals. Bryan Krebs, a New Paltz Middle School science teacher and advisor to the Climate Club said the importance of pollinators cannot be understated.
“And our connection to this is important,” Krebs said. “75-to-95 percent of flowering plants across the world require pollinators to help pollinate their flowers. And in turn, we then are provided with 35 percent of our diet and medications related to those plants. So we are uniquely connected to all pollinators and the services they provide.”
The Climate Club plans to add plantings to the existing native garden in front of the middle school, create a foundation garden with plants and plugs near the back entrance to the sixth-grade wing, and create a pollinator meadow on the southwest corner of the property along Manheim Boulevard near the school’s bus loop.
Mary Jane Nusbaum, a New Paltz Middle School art teacher and faculty advisor to the Climate Club explained that in order to prepare the ground for pollinator gardens and meadows, they first smother existing grass with plastic sheeting to prepare the earth for planting, a process that’s repeated two or three times.
“It smothers the facade first and then there are other things that are still dormant so that you roll it back for a couple of weeks, cover it again and it kills off more of the competition for the seeds that we want to put in,” she said, adding that ideally that process begins this spring to allow for planting of desired seeds in the fall.
While the plants will continue to mature through 2025-26, a stipulation of the grant requires that the process of creating the pollinator garden and meadow be completed within a year.
Over 80 groups from six regional counties applied for grants from Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley, with the focus on restoring the ecology of the natural environment, reducing greenhouse gases, and improving the air and water. Just 16 grants were awarded for 2023, with the New Paltz Middle School Climate Club receiving the sole award given to a school. Among the other organizations receiving awards were the Town of Saugerties, Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy, Gardiner Library and the Ulster County YWCA.
Among those involved are the members of the Climate Club, who will join together with Art Club students to make informational signs as well as plant and care for the gardens. Members of the community will also assist with watering the installations and helping with their upkeep during. The site will also be used by middle school teachers as an outdoor classroom.
The Climate Club has experience with creating pollinator gardens, helping install one at the New Paltz Community Center on Veterans Drive in 2021.
This time around, the Climate Club’s pollinator projects would become part of the Wallkill Valley Land Trust’s pollinator pathway, a series of pollinator gardens and meadows, both public and private, dotting the landscape from Saugerties to Pine Island.
“It’s a nationwide initiative to restore habitats one backyard at a time,” said Nusbaum.
A member of the Climate Club named Henry explained the motivation behind the planned New Paltz Middle School pollinator garden and meadow initiative.
“We want to make the world a better place for future generations including our own children,” he said. “Also help the environment by creating pollinator habitats, provide an example of how to create and maintain a pollinator space and share information so that other people can create pollinator habitats in their own communities.”
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