Visit Manitou Springs Garden

The Chamber of Commerce in Manitou Springs may easily be found along Manitou Avenue thanks to its mint green, quirky question mark sculpture surrounded by a colorful menagerie of native flowers, grasses, and shrubs. Plant species featured here include catmint, iris pallida, baptisia, rockcress, barberry shrub, honeysuckle, daylily, dianthus, yarrow, lavender, sedum, Shasta daisy, Black eyed Susan, and grass varieties of Karl Foster and miscanthus. The Manitou Springs Garden Club lovingly planted and maintains this garden viewed and enjoyed by so many in Manitou.

MANITOU SPRINGS POLLINATOR DISTRICT

The creation of this district is an outgrowth of work begun in 2018 by the Manitou Springs Pollinator Project. Their mission is “to enhance the natural environment of Manitou Springs to make it a more pollinator friendly city”. In September of 2019, Manitou Springs City Council Adopted a Resolution Establishing the Commitment to Have a Sustainable Environment and An Ambitious Response to Climate Change for the City of Manitou Springs. The first of seventeen actions states, “Protect pollinators and ecosystem health through reconfirming our commitment to organic land management and, beginning immediately, expand the use of pollinator-friendly plants and practices on City and private properties”. Manitou Springs School District 14 has also committed to supporting this project.

Over the winter of 2018-2019 it was discovered that at least eight beehives in Manitou Springs were abandoned by the bees, or the bees had died inside the hive. Aware that Pollinator populations have been declining nationwide, and that pollinator health and diversity play a critical role in the food supply for wildlife and people, project members researched creating a more robust program. This led to the discovery of a supported Pollinator District Program developed by the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado. https://butterflies.org/copollinatornetwork/. Pollinator Project members are sponsoring Amy Yarger, Horticulture Director of the Butterfly Pavilion, to do a public presentation in Manitou Springs about Pollinator Communities during the month of June, 2020. Our goal is for Manitou Springs to become a Municipal Pollinator District. 

What is a Pollinator District? 

According to the Colorado Pollinator Network, “A Pollinator District is a community that is absolutely committed to conserving and improving habitat for pollinators in all aspect of operations. A Pollinator District is a development, including businesses, schools, public facilities and parks, designed, constructed and maintained in such a way that pollinator habitat demonstrates a net gain over the footprint of development. A Pollinator District engages all of the people who live, work and play there in this vital work; community members are vital resources who become citizen scientists, beekeepers, gardeners and stewards of the land. A Pollinator District is a long-term commitment, because these habitats and the populations of pollinators that rely on them take years to establish and thrive”. 

List of plants from Becky Elder dated 5.19.2022.