CHENANGO COUNTY – This week marks National Pollinator Week and our pollinators could surely use some help. Bees, butterflies, moths and even ants pollinate our flowers giving us delicious apples, strawberries, raspberries and so many more fruits and vegetables.

Pollinators are truly the key to our food system, and with that a special program is being offered at Cornell Cooperative Extension this month in honor of our pollinators.

Gardening for Pollinators will be presented June 30 from 5 – 7 p.m. at the Cornell Cooperative Extension location of Chenango County in Norwich. There, you will learn pollinator-plant relationships and the types of plants you can cultivate to provide food for these small yet important components of the natural world that give us things like apples, pumpkins and raspberries via pollination.

If the weather is cooperative, the group will walk to the Guernsey Memorial Library and view the Pollination Station mini garden installed and maintained by the Master Gardener Volunteers.

Admission fee is $5 per person, and youths 14 and under are free to participate.

For more information, call 607-334-5841, ext. 11 no later than June 29 to register, class size is limited to 15 participants.

Submitted by Patty Catalano,

Horticulture Educator