Club teaches about pollinators, plants
The Southern Butler County Garden Club held an “open garden” educational session for the public Thursday morning and afternoon to teach CranberryTownship residents and gardeners about “pollinators, plants and purpose” heading into the autumn season.
Club members shared information and resources at the Cranberry Community Garden in Graham Park, a longtime project of the club since 2017.
Rose Romboski, chairwoman of the community garden, said the club works together and creates sign-up sheets each week to maintain the garden, which is a Certified Wildlife Habitat, Pollinator Friendly Garden and Monarch Waystation.
“It's a definite team effort with our membership, and great collaboration with Cranberry Township and the Cranberry Township Community Chest,” she said. “We like to have open garden days to offer an educational session for residents to come out and ask questions, either about the community garden here or their home landscape.”
Romboski said the garden is made up of a lot of local flora.
“A good majority of it is (native), to attract native birds, butterflies and bees,” she said. “This is such a nice time of the year because for the fall garden, there's a lot of different things blooming, so it's kind of nice to showcase that your garden can go into the fall season.”The garden club is working on getting signage for the garden to provide more information to visitors.“We're in the process right now of having a big sign constructed to talk about what we do here as well as plant labels for all the plant material,” she said.Karen Faust, member and past president of the garden club, said that during the pandemic last summer, the garden served as an outdoor meeting space for the club and for local groups, including a church Bible study circle.“We had our garden club meetings in here, and everybody brought a chair and a bottle of water,” she said. “It was wonderful because it was a twofer. You got your meeting — we even had speakers come in — and it was perfect.”The garden is free and open to visitors, and features a Blue Star memorial plaque and a lending library stand of gardening books.Pollinator educationVisitors to the event Thursday learned about the club's work to maintain the garden, and received materials on how to create their own pollinator-friendly spaces on their own property. Pollinators can include birds and hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and bugs. Cultivating native plants as well as more specific habitat plants such as milkweed for monarch butterflies can attract local wildlife.Honora Rockar of the Cranberry Township Environmental Advisory Committee came to learn more about what the club does to maintain the garden. “I'm here to learn because one of our work areas is trees and pollinators,” Rockar said.Joyce Phillis, a Cranberry resident, stopped by the event to see the flowers. “It's so nice to walk around here,” she said. “I enjoy this — the hard work shows.”
