#pollinators

i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf

From the article:

It’s a simple concept: Use the roof of a no-frills bus station to offset the heat-island effect in urban areas devoid of trees, provide direct shade at bus shelters, help reduce flooding, improve biodiversity of native pollinators, and see something a little more beautiful on the daily commute. Boston made history as the first city in the United States to adopt the green roof last year, sometimes called “living roofs,” and have already made waves in other locations. This year, according to the Washington Post, green shelters are planned in two Maryland towns, with proposals to install green roofs in Arlington, Virginia and New York.  While it seems like a small gesture to the bees of any given city, the initiative is no small feat.  In fact, if Boston installed living roofs on all 8,000 of its bus stops, the city estimates it would amount to 17 acres of green space, or about 13 football fields.

While this may seem like a little thing, it's a great proof of concept that could be expanded on. Green roofs do an amazing job of cooling environments while absorbing CO2 without the energy inputs and upkeep that would be required for fans or air conditioning. Especially in urban environments where there is little shade or green space.

These kind of shelters have already been implemented in several places in Europe, but Boston is the first US city to add green roofs to bus stops.

"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinator’s paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.

Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.

The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting “nature take the lead” that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.

“This superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawk’s beard, are sometimes branded as ‘weeds’. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,” Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.

“Due to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.”

Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.

The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.

Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."

A caveat to this study: the researchers were primarily looking at insect pollinator biodiversity. Planting a few native wildflowers in your garden will not suddenly cause unusual megafauna from the surrounding hinterlands to crowd onto your porch.

That being said, this study backs up Douglas Tallamy's optimistic vision of Homegrown National Park, which calls for people in communities of all sizes to dedicate some of their yard (or porch or balcony) to native plants. This creates a patchwork of microhabitats that can support more mobile insect life and other small beings, which is particularly crucial in areas where habitat fragmentation is severe. This patchwork can create migration corridors, at least for smaller, very mobile species, between larger areas of habitat that were previously cut off from each other.

It may not seem like much to have a few pots of native flowers on your tiny little balcony compared to someone who can rewild acres of land, but it makes more of a difference than you may realize. You may just be creating a place where a pollinating insect flying by can get some nectar, or lay her eggs. Moreover, by planting native species you're showing your neighbors these plants can be just as beautiful as non-native ornamentals, and they may follow suit.

Fine-backed Red Paper Wasp (Polistes carolina), male, taken November 8, 2025, in Georgia, US