Skalkaho Bend Park has a native Wildflower Pollinator Garden thanks to great community collaboration.
The City of Hamilton, Bitter Root Water Forum and Bitterroot Audubon worked to create a sustainable garden for all to enjoy at Hamilton’s newest park. The effort was pushed forward by Amy Fox, director of Parks and Urban Forestry of Hamilton; Alex Ocanas, community engagement coordinator for BRWF; and Bill and Becky Peters, Bitterroot Audubon members.
“It was a case of overlapping interests — birds, water and wildlife,” Ocanas said. “Our biggest reason for supporting this is because it is such a popular place for people to come and visit. It is a huge demonstration garden for the beauty of native plants. We all have an interest in inspiring local residents in picking up native landscaping or water-wise landscaping.”
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She hopes the community will see the beauty.
“It’s colorful, it’s vibrant, it attracts butterflies,” Ocanas said. “It is a great example to our community of what their water-wise landscaping can look like. It is beautiful.”
For the first step, the Peters and Fox presented their plan at a Hamilton City Council meeting. It was approved.
Creating a Native Wildflower Pollinator Garden at Skalkaho Bend Park has been done in stages. First they seeded in November of 2021, then planted some plants in the spring of 2022 and on May 13 they planted seedlings.
“We wanted to see what we would get after seeding and we got a few things,” Becky Peters said. “We planted with kids and we can see what has come up, what survived. Those plants are our indicators.”
At the beginning of the trail are successful plants. Currently in bloom is purple small-flower penstemon (or beardtongue) for early insects just coming out for the year.
The sign on the garden says, “Plants for Birds — The native plants in this garden provide food and shelter for our beautiful birds, and they contribute to a healthier world for all of us.”
Peters said her goal was to have 180 flowers, 20 species, for three different seasons with different heights and different colors. She contacted Aimee Kelley at Great Bear Native Plants who also added grasses to the mixture.
“I didn’t know how important grasses were to insects for resting places, hiding places and moisture containment,” Peters said. “I also contacted Leon Stangl [of Yourganic Farm] who also gave good advice. He came up with three things for our volunteers to do.”
On May 13, the collaborative organizations and 16 volunteers added 180 seedlings to an area at the beginning of the trail. The process included mapping out a thoughtful design for plant success, digging three dozen large holes where the 180 seedlings would be planted, enhancing soils with amendments like fungi, worm casting tea, minerals, and mulch.
Ocanas said the volunteers were a good mixture of “newcomers and longtime Bitterrooters.”
“From a community partner perspective it was neat that they got to have a hand in this garden,” she said. “For years, they’ll pass by and say ‘I helped.’ It was some people’s first time to ever plant a plant.”
Every native wildflower plant is localized to the insects, the surrounding plants, the soil and the area.
“So, when an insect shows up they go ‘I’m home’,” Peters said. “We added cardboard to keep the soil moist and keep the weeds down, kind of like mulch. We put in sticks and labeled each plant.”
Milkweed, wild flax, coneflower, Common Yarrow and Goldenrod are some of the 20 varieties planted.
“These are water-wise and drought-resistant,” Peters said. “We are watering them for the first few years just to get them going. The planting area was planned out with tall in back, shorter in front, then the south end of the area is the ‘wild factor’ of chaos.”
The newer plants are fenced in for their protection from browsing animals and foot traffic but the third-year plants are established and ready for their fences to be removed. BRWF provided the posts and Hamilton City provided the fencing.
Fox said the effort will have multiple rewards.
“This is a nice, open park and people come here to view wildlife,” Fox said. “With the bird populations and insects having trouble anything we can do to help pollinators is important. There are a lot of people who come here to walk and it will get a lot of visibility.”
Fox said there is a trail counter that registers walkers on the trail and lets planners know what days of the week and what months are popular. She said the counter shows the average daily traffic of 2020 was 152, of 2021 was 167, 2022 was 197 and so far in 2023 the average daily traffic has been 188.
“Monthly averages are pretty even throughout the year, with slight dips from Nov.-Dec.,” Fox said. “The days of the week are pretty even, with slight increases on the weekends.”