Just Roots
Greenfield Community Farm
34 Glenbrook Drive (off Leyden Road)
In the fall of 2021 the Pollinator Team of Greening Greenfield invited the community to help plant two pre-designed "pollinator kits" in Just Roots farm's pollinator garden beds. We hosted a sale of native plant "kits" for home gardeners. These kits included plants most visited by endangered species of bumblebees identified by the work of Dr Rob Gegear(see Beecology). The kits were designed by Evan Abramson of Landscape Interactions and were grown from seed by Amy Pulley of A Wing and A Prayer Nursery in Cummington, MA.
Since the summer of 2022, Just Roots farmers have been meeting with the Greening Greenfield Pollinator Team to create a 1/4 acre People's Pollinator Meadow on the farm. Planting in the meadow began in the summer of 2023. Volunteers are encouraged to participate at every stage of its development.
About this garden:
As farmers at Just Roots were exploring how to enhance crop production with the use of pollinator plants on the farm, they began to understand the science that indicated that their farm's harvests would be improved if they intentionally planted to encourage the hundreds of species of native pollinating insects that have co-evolved with native flowering plants. To move in this direction farmers at Just Roots Community Farm and the Pollinator Committee of Greening Greenfield agreed to work together.
In September of 2022, the farm, in collaboration with the Greening Greenfield Pollinator Team, held the first Workshop for farmers and others about how planting specifically for pollinators can enhance productivity on a farm.
The existing native plant pollinator beds at Just Roots Community Farms are tended by the team of volunteers who installed them.
Volunteer opportunities: Volunteers are welcome to join weeding and planting events that occur intermittently (and to come at any time to observe the pollinator species at work).
Volunteer Coordinators: Elizabeth Erickson @ 624-3258
34 Glenbrook Drive (off Leyden Road)