The Public Art Pollinator Pastures Project

Keep up to date on Pollinator Pasture events on our Facebook page!

In April 2016, UBC Okanagan and the City of Kelowna agreed to partner on a habitat restoration project at the Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage site in order to support native pollinators essential to the Okanagan’s agricultural base and for ecosystem health.

In 2016, scores of volunteers, UBC faculty members and students, businesses, schools, and non-profits came together under the research initiative Border Free Bees to create a pilot project meadow on the site and have designed and delivered over 20 different events on site and off.  The events and projects fall into three main categories related to bees and native pollinators: planting projects; community-engaged art projects; and educational projects.  
Over 150 volunteers have worked on the projects and hundreds of Kelowna citizens have attended the events.  The Kelowna pasture is located at the Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage site at the corner of Dilworth and Leckie Roads in Kelowna, British Columbia. To learn more, check out the Pollinator Pasture website, “Border Free Bees”

We welcome volunteers to help us dig, garden, weed, water and install! Contact us through our contact page on this website .  We are beginning a new project in 2017 – The Kelowna Nectar Trail.  See this link: http://borderfreebees.com/kelowna-nectar-trail/

ABOUT:  Border Free Bees (BFB) is a long-term pollinator-focused public art initiative headed by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD) and Nancy Holmes, Associate Professor in Creative Studies at The University of British Columbia, Okanagan (UBCO). The initiative’s mission includes raising awareness of the plight of wild pollinators, particularly bees, empowering communities to actively engage in solutions for habitat loss, and transforming underutilized urban sites into aesthetically pleasing and scientifically viable pollinator pastures. This three-year project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and has numerous funding and research partnerships including ECUAD, UBCO, Simon Fraser University (SFU), the cities of Vancouver, Richmond, and Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada, as well as several Kelowna organizations including the Okanagan Master Gardeners, The Okanagan Xeriscape Association, SeedsCo, Okanagan Regional Library, Kelowna Art Gallery, RONA, The Greenery, Art Knapp, Wild Blooms Nursery, Buckerfields, Winn Rentals, and Unless Market, as well as several local schools.

Read the 2016 Report to Partners: pad_bfb-conversation-2016

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