Borough employees, police, commission members and other volunteers were all present Tuesday for the unveiling and official dedication of the new community Pollinator Garden located near the Senior Center in the Municipal Yacht Harbor.
In her welcome and opening statements, Green Team Committee chair Ellen O’Dwyer pointed out “this is a noticeable and important achievement in spreading the education on sustainable gardening and the importance of pollinators in our ecosystem. It is particularly significant in light of the fact we are a small borough and designing and accomplishing all the work involved for success involves many volunteers and a sincere interest on the part of the borough leaders. We have been highly successful in both areas,” O’Dwyer said.
The program is funded by the Sustainable Jersey Grants Program and the PSEG Foundation.
“Pollinators are not just honeybees,” O’dwyer said, “but other beneficial insects, birds, and mammals also are helped through the program.”
In addition to attracting pollinators, the plants are mostly native species, all perennials, and deer resistant. The garden will bloom from early spring in red, white, and blue phlox, through summer with a variety of colors, but also yellow and blue signifying Atlantic Highlands, O’Dwyer added.! “It will finish blooming in the late fall, as our Monarch butterflies that we have been raising through an earlier program and volunteerism, migrate south.”
The new pollinator garden has taken environmental improvements to a new level, she continued. Bigger than planned, it has expanded to replace three additional sections of grass that required mowing; with more than 150 perennial plants, shrubs, and grasses, and spanning more than 15 different species, the group has created a diverse habitat, offering not only food and nectar, but habitat as well.
In explaining how the garden will play an important role in the local ecosystem and food chain, O’Dwyer said it will require little maintenance and no mowing; nor will it interfere with pedestrian access to the Senior Center.
The new garden can also be adopted and adapted as a model throughout the borough by residents, with no regard to the size of available space in the areas they would create for a pollinator garden.
Mayor Loretta Gluckstein praised the employees and volunteers at the dedication ceremony. O’Dwyer had pointed out the borough’s Department of Public Works and Harbor crew brought machinery after grass was removed, and provided equipment for replacement of poor soil and, debris, as well as post hole diggers and pickaxes to break through difficult materials by hand since each individual plant required a mini excavation, soil improvements, fertilizer, topsoil and mulch. “By overcoming these difficulties in planting…we have essentially reclaimed the land from the very inhospitable fill upon which the area was built to something usable!,“ O’Dwyer said.
The chair praised all the organizations and personnel involved in the transformation led by the Greem Team, including the borough’s Beautification Committee, Environmental Commission, Shade Tree Commission, and Morgan Spicer, a member of the Environmental Commission and a professional artist who designed artwork for the Team.
Some individuals present at the ceremony and praised included PWS Director Jim Phillips, Harbormaster Lou Fligor, Dan Johnson and his team of half a dozen men, as well as the Atlantic Highlands Garden Club, Historical Society, Wild About Atlantic Highlands, and local residents who turned out to offer assistance wherever they could help.
Wild about Atlantic Highlands member Marilyn Scherfern explained the borough needs 100 individual gardens in order for the borough to be cited as Habitat City by the National Wildlife Federation. In spite of only working for a few months towards this goal, Scherfern said only nine more sites are needed to be recognized before the borough receives its designation. Those interested in creating a Certified Habitat can visit NEW.org/Gardens to learn more about the program.
The completion and opening of this Community Pollinator Garden enables us “to check another box as a Certified Habitat,” O’Dwyer said to the applause of the crowd gathered for the dedicating
