Make your garden a Pollinator Corridor Stepping Stone!  How can a home garden become a stepping stone in Greenfield's Pollinator Corridor?  Maybe you and your neighbors already provide a stepping stone!  Do you plant native flowers and grasses in your yard?  Are you lucky enough to have a mature oak or cherry as well?  If so, you have provided what's needed for pollinating insects to complete their life cycle:  Adult insects can gather nectar and pollen and can also lay their eggs on the leaves.  Once the eggs hatch, the young (larvae) will have something to eat, because the native plants they feed on are right there where the eggs were laid in the first place.  And if you leave the leaves under the trees and shrubs in the fall, overwintering insects will be safe till spring.

Though we've focused on pollinators, maybe you're more interested in birds than insects.  As it happens, the birds we love to see nesting in our shrubs and trees need soft insect larvae, not seeds, to feed their young.  A nesting pair might forage for insects in your yard and in the yards of your neighbors – that is, if you and your neighbors have the native trees, shrubs, and flowering plants that support the insects needed by the birds.  If so, you and your neighbors together provide what is needed for the pollinators and for the nesting birds.  

Now imagine that a bird or butterfly is migrating north or south. When it needs to eat or rest, it may not be right over a river or forest.  It needs plenty of places to stop in between, and your neighborhood can provide such a place. By providing places where birds and pollinators can find food and shelter, you and your neighbors can contribute to a Pollinator Corridor, which can help replace the extended natural spaces that have been lost to development.