The Pollinator Pathway is a participatory art, design and ecology social sculpture initiative founded by the artist and designer Sarah Bergmann. Its objective is to connect existing isolated green spaces and create a more hospitable urban environment for

pollinator A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are the maj ...

s like bees with a system of

ecological corridor A wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures (such as roads, development, or logging). This allows an exchange of individuals between ...

s of flowering plants by using existing urban infrastructure such as curb space and rooftops.

Pathways

The first pollinator pathway () is located on

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

's east-west Columbia Street, and connects

Seattle University Seattle University (SeattleU) is a private Jesuit university in Seattle, Washington. Seattle University is the largest independent university in the Northwestern United States, with over 7,500 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate prog ...

's campus on 12th Avenue to Nora's Woods on 29th Avenue away, crossing one third of Seattle's width. A second long official pollinator pathway is slated for Seattle's north-south 11th Avenue, connecting Seattle University's campus to Volunteer Park. The first segment of the pathway on Columbia Street, which Bergmann received grants from the City of Seattle, Northwest Horticultural Society, and

Awesome Foundation The Awesome Foundation for the arts and sciences is an international network of autonomous 'chapters' (groups) of philanthropists that provide small grants for projects to "people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe." ...

to create, replaced a long, grass strip between the street and sidewalk with plants that could attract pollinators. The pathways are composed of individual plots of

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

native plant In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often popularised as "with no human intervention") during history. The term is equ ...

species on city-owned property, tended by local volunteers. Bergmann had a related installation, ''Portal to The Pollinator Pathway'', at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park in 2012. In 2014, she made presentations on the project at

Frye Art Museum The Frye Art Museum is a modern and contemporary art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1952 to house the collection of Charles and Emma Frye and has since grown to include rotating temporary ex ...

and Seattle Tilth.

Certification

Since late 2013, Bergmann has offered a certification program for new pathways to use the trademarked Pollinator Pathway name.

Other cities

Cities other than Seattle have explored the idea of connecting landscapes for pollinators. In 2008, about the same time the Seattle project was getting under way, the

Canadian Pollination Initiative The Canadian Pollination Initiative (NSERC-CANPOLIN) is one of nine new Strategic Networks announced in September 2009 and supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). NSERC-CANPOLIN has funding for five year ...

wrote a paper on a "pollinator park" concept to include "...right-of-way passages, including highways, power lines, gas lines and other maintained corridors can be designed in such a way that they serve as pollinator habitats." In 2011, a New York author and artist Aaron Birk wrote an illustrated story, ''The Pollinator's Corridor'', about a pathway connecting the city's landscape.

City–citizen discussions

Several cities have used official means to initiate citizen discussions on their own pollinator pathways following Seattle's model, including Redmond, Washington; the Niagara Falls, New York area; and Los Angeles, California via the mayor's blog.

Awards

In 2012, Bergmann received '' The Strangers Genius Award and Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Award for the project. In 2013, she was named one of Seattle's most influential people of the year by ''Seattle Magazine'', along with recipients of the award who had created other Seattle area pollinator conservation projects.

Notes

References

External links

* * * (2015) {{DEFAULTSORT:Pollinator Pathway Geography of Seattle Pollination management Landscape architecture