Highlighting native plants, local pollinators, and green space in our community
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#PlantWildflowers Series
In Spring 2022, Berkeley Public Library hosted a series of events around the subject of native plants and how to support local pollinators, with various engagements for all ages.
This was part of the nationwide #PlantWildflowers campaign that highlights the critical role bees and other pollinators play in healthy ecosystems. In support of the film, My Garden of a Thousand Bees, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios and PBS Nature launched the #PlantWildflowers campaign to encourage communities across the U.S. to better understand the importance of native bees and other pollinators and to create new pollinator habitats where pollinators can thrive.
Bees and other pollinators play a crucial role in nature, pollinating fruits, vegetables, grains, and flowers that are essential to both human agriculture and wild ecosystems. But these important pollinators are facing challenges from habitat and food supply decline, pesticides, and more.
Check out these short videos, in addition to the documentary at the center of this initiative - My Garden of a Thousand Bees.
This 6 minute film w/ Dr/ Samuel Ramsey explores what pollinators are, what services they provide, the astonishing diversity of pollinators (particularly native bees) found in North America, and how everyone can help protect pollinators in their communities.
Sym-BEE-osis, co-produced by Days Edge Productions and HHMI Tangled Bank Studios.
This 17 minute video follows a team of researchers as they unravel the mysteries of the bee-plant-microbe symbiosis and explore the unintended consequences of our reliance on agrochemicals.
My Garden of a Thousand Bees follows acclaimed wildlife filmmaker Martin Dohrn, who, locked down by coronavirus, turns his lenses on the surprising and spectacular bees living in his own urban garden in Bristol, England. The full film is 53 minutes and had a national broadcast premiere on Nature on PBS in October 2021 and re-aired in May 2022.
Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can- and must take to reverse declining biodiversity, why we must change our adversarial relationship with nature to a collaborative one, and why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.
Resources shared during the chat can be found in this Google Doc.
