Somerville Garden Club

Meet Your Native Bees!

We will watch a video of a talk given by Pam Phillips, head of Watertown, Massachusetts’ Friends of Bees, a working group of Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice, and the Environment, about our local bees. The talk was hosted by Mount Auburn Cemetery during Pollinator Week in June 2022.

You’ll see that there’s more to bees than honeybees. Native bees in Watertown come in a variety of sizes and shapes. There are roughly 20,000 species of bees in the world, about 4,000 in North America, and about 400 in Massachusetts. So what kinds of bees do we have in Watertown? In “Meet Your Bees”, you’ll learn what they look like, how they live, and what we can do to help them.

Pam Phillips is a self-taught naturalist and bee enthusiast.  Her interest in bees began in 2006 when she learned about colony collapse disorder. In her own Watertwon backyard and she identified twelve (12) varieties of bees in since then she has expanded her interest and knowledge through working with on Citizen Science projects through Bug Guide.Net, an online resource devoted to North American insects, spiders and their kin, offering identification, images, and information. 

In-person meetings are held on the second Wednesday of the month at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. The SGC has been informed that the entry doors to the TAB will be locked at 8pm, including on our meeting days. Please arrange your arrival times accordingly.

Tough Plants for Tough Places: Growing Native Plants on Asphalt

Dawn Burau, of Wild Indigo Gardening, LLC., will share her experiences growing native plants in a Somerville yard. Between the her paved backyard and the neighbor’s yard and chain-link fence, was roughly a foot of poor soil. Believing that every available strip of land can support the ecosystem, Dawn planted various native plants to see which ones would thrive, which one succumbed to rabbit damage, and which ones just wouldn’t make it. Join the journey and learn the top three thriving plants thus far. Get other tips for growing native plants in unlikely places as well!

In-person meetings are held on the second Wednesday of the month at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. The SGC has been informed that the entry doors to the TAB will be locked at 8pm, including on our meeting days. Please arrange your arrival times accordingly.