Summer fun at the Albion Hills Community Farm’s Pollinator Festival

August 17, 2023 · 0 Comments

AHCF has been working to support pollinators since 2019

By ZACHARY ROMAN

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Bees and butterflies are hard workers.

As pollinators, they play an important part in our ecosystem — and one local non-profit is making sure these incredible insects get the attention they deserve.

On August 12, the Albion Hills Community Farm (ACHF) hosted its first-ever Pollinator Festival at its farm in Bolton in the Albion Hills Conservation Area.

The event featured farm tours, presentations about bees and monarch butterflies, a “Caledon Butterflyway” workshop, fresh farm market, and a chance to see a monarch butterfly hatchery.

Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) employees Sarah Kinoshita, an Education Interpreter, and Chris Bialek, a Community Outreach Coordinator, attended the Pollinator Festival to teach attendees about bees.

Kinoshita said people know the most about honey bees because they’re more directly involved in our lives. However, she explained there are actually over 300 species of bees in the Greater Toronto Area alone.

Bialek and Kinoshita said they often visit the AHCF for various programs, and helped at a planting of native trees at the farm in June. The planting was done to provide food for birds and pollinators.

Kinoshita said native plants are extremely important.

“Our native pollinators have spent millions of years co-evolving with our native plants,” said Kinoshita. “They interact with them a lot better… there are some native plants that are only pollinated by a specific type of bee because they co-evolved so closely.”

Just as planting native plants is important, so is removing invasive species of plants as they can negatively affect the work of pollinators. Kinoshita said invasive plants are very tenacious and it requires dedication to remove them from a garden.

Bialek explained that some plants are host plants.

“Monarch butterflies, they’ll only lay their eggs on milkweed plants,” said Bialek. “If you don’t have milkweed, you don’t have monarch butterflies… if we plant those, it will support those butterflies but also other species that need pollen and nectar.”

Karen Hutchinson of the ACHF said the Pollinator Festival was invented to give people a chance to see and celebrate the unsung pollinator heroes.

“We’re in love with pollinators at the farm,” said Hutchinson. “It’s good for gardeners to attract pollinators, we know our food depends on pollinators… if we feed them, they’ll help us.”

Hutchinson said many people with garden plots at the AHCF are starting to plant native plant species to encourage pollinators to visit their gardens. She added the more you can help the ecosystem, the better your crop is going to be.