Red Course Pollinator Garden Gets a Makeover!

Every now and then, our golf course gardens need some tender love and care. This season, we decided to focus our attention on the "Red Eye" wildflower garden, our beautiful pollinator habitat that can be seen from #13 fairway on the Red Course. 

The Red Eye blooms as early as May and continues well into October. It is perhaps one of our most unique gardens as Victor Azzeretto (our horticulturist) designed it to be an eye-catching spiral shape with a path down the middle (below).  

To revamp the area, our goal was to remove stubborn invasives, amend soil where needed, and prep a new space for the reintroduction of pollinator-favorite plants (above). This kind of work often provides an opportunity to call on the local community and lucky for us George Kiesel (left) helped us do just that! George is a NYS park employee from one of our sister parks, Connetquot State Park. He dedicates his time to organizing community group events that aim at beautifying different state parks all over Long Island! With that and our needs in mind, George brought National Grid's employee volunteer day to Bethpage State Park!

The volunteers came ready to learn and excited to plant! 

As always, we opted for plants that are native perennials and a mix that does not bloom all at once. This included goldenrod, asters, blazingstars, and multiple milkweed varieties  (milkweed is the only host for Monarch Butterfly larvae).

It might have been a small group but they worked fast.  Together with our park staff, the National Grid team was able to plant over 200 plugs, all before noon!

Overall it was a wonderful community gardening imitative. National Grid's team leader Philip kindly thanked us in saying he and his team felt educated about the "balance between nature and man and the importance of insects and a variety of flowers". He also mentioned that when all was said and done his group "developed a better liking for nature and the environment" and that they felt  they were now successful part-time gardners. 

We love the sentiment Philip and we feel equally successful as park staff too! To not just create a new patch for our Red Course but a sense of community and environmental stewardship too...

what a gift!

It is clear that teamwork makes the dream work! 

Thank you National Grid !! 

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Post photography and writing by Ecologist Yael Weiss.