The Allegheny County Parks Foundation in Pennsylvania oversees the operation of one of the largest regional park systems in the United States. The nine parks under their care occupy over 12,000 acres of land in the areas surrounding the city of Pittsburgh and welcome more than 22 million visitors each year.  After conducting a 2015 […]

Envisioning the Possibilities for Pollinators In 2015, when the McCormick Corporation announced that they would break ground on their new headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland, they saw 350,000 square feet of possibilities. They planned on offering amenities like a full-service café and a fitness center, which spoke to their company’s desire to create an inviting […]

Creating habitat for pollinators is one of the most effective and efficient ways we can naturalize our landscapes. By establishing healthy, diverse wildflower meadows with the intent to accommodate native pollinators, landscape architects can combine sustainability with design. In 2016, Bill Kieffer, a landscape architect at Hershey Gardens, partnered with Ernst Seeds to build a […]

The PA Queen Project and the HHBBC, with support from Penn State University and Purdue University, collaborated on a study comparing colonies with varroa mite-resistant queens versus non-varroa mite-resistant queens from 2018 to 2019. The study enlisted 100 hobbyist beekeepers in the comparison study with the objective of helping change their behavior to promote varroa […]

by Rachel Sohmer Solar farms can (and should) do more than produce clean energy. Creating pollinator habitat at solar energy sites means renewable energy in a sustainable landscape that benefits us all. As the sight of rows upon rows of solar panels sprawling across the landscape becomes increasingly more common, we have good reason to […]

by Hermann Samano Iconic is the most appropriate word to describe the Monarch butterfly. Most of us have fond childhood memories of the unmistakable orange and black beauty flitting around the blue sky on sunny summer days. They were everywhere — and their presence was so magnificent. Their name, in Greek, means “sleepy transformation” in […]

by Rachel Sohmer Given the current realities of pesticide use, habitat destruction, parasites and disease, climate change and air pollution among yet other stressors, there is no denying that conserving bees is a complex problem demanding complex solutions. Poor nutrition, linked to widespread declines in both the abundance and diversity of flowering plants, has profound […]

Allergy sufferers often curse the golden sea of blooms from goldenrods that appear in fallow fields, landscapes and along roadsides from July to November. Sadly, these complaints are based on an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Both members of the aster family (Asteraceae), goldenrods (Solidago genus) are often errantly identified as allergenic ragweeds (Ambrosia genus). Though there […]

A post by Guest Contributor, Rob Davis Filmmaker Scott Mason returned to his hometown of Meadville, PA earlier this year and produced a beautiful video about how the national trend of pollinator-friendly solar is creating community and economic opportunity in Pennsylvania. Touring the Ernst Conservation Seeds farm last fall, and hearing from native and naturalized […]

In the midst of all this March madness, a window of opportunity is closing for landowners to get a jump on early planting of native seeds by frost seeding. As the name implies, frost seeding relies on frost-producing temperatures. In the North, you likely still have a few opportunities, while those in the South might have […]