By Ari Hippensteal, SCWF Community Outreach Manager

SCWF staff and volunteers, along with the Friends of the Community Orchard, gathered together to install a new demonstration native plant pollinator garden in the Rosewood Community Orchard.

Having just recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, the Rosewood Community Orchard is home to a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Karen Murphy, one of the keepers of the orchard, helped to select a variety of native pollinator plants that were put into the garden during the volunteer day. Calico asters, swamp milkweed, snowy milkweed, narrow-leaved sunflowers, cardinal flowers, spotted beebalm, sweet goldenrod, and blazing stars are all new additions to the orchard, thanks to the generosity of Wells Fargo, who sponsored this project.

These pollinator plants will aid the fruit and vegetable plants that already grow there. Not only do they provide a source of food for pollinators, but their bright and colorful flowers will also attract many different pollinator species to help move pollen within and between plants of the orchard.

Rosewood Community Orchard is unique in that it allows all who pass through it to take any of the produce that is grown in the space and it is a great opportunity to learn more about gardening, plants, and the many pollinators that call the orchard home.

Volunteers also installed several SCWF signs including Birds in the Garden, The Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle, Pollinator Garden, and a Palmetto Wildlife Habitat sign that will provide an educational component to the pollinator garden.

The pollinator garden was also carefully placed at the intersections of the orchard handicap-accessible boardwalk, meaning that the garden is accessible to all members of the Rosewood Community.

Thank you to Wells Fargo for sponsoring this project.

Ari Hippensteal, SCWF Community Outreach Manager, and previous volunteer for the Rosewood Community Orchard boardwalk noted that “This is a special place that you always feel drawn to come back to. You can tell how much effort and love has been put into the orchard and how cherished it is by the people who spend time here.”