Why native pollinators?

Native pollinators are vital to creating and maintaining the habitats and ecosystems that most animals rely on for food and shelter — including humans. What happens (or doesn’t happen) at the pollination scale has repercussions all the way up the food chain. Over 80% of the flowering plants on Earth depend upon insect‐mediated pollination; bees alone pollinate 45% of the food crops grown in Massachusetts, and one‐third of them food grown in the United States.
[Source: Evan Abramson, Lincoln Pollinator Action Plan]

The Bob Mead Memorial
Native Pollination Preservation Garden

Artist rendition of the native pollination garden at Page Field by Linda Cargiuolo
The environment is the newest area of focus for Rotary International. With pollinators in decline across the globe, in the fall of 2021 the Rotary Club of Bedford determined that creating a community pollination garden would be a step in mitigating the problem. The club also wanted to honor one of our club's founding members by naming the garden after him and his contributions to the town (Bob Mead). The first steps in the process involved procuring land from the town of Bedford and establishing a plan to make a native pollination preservation garden a reality.