This guest post submitted by Alan Nogee, president of Friends of Cold Spring Park
Want to read a good children’s book about nature while being in nature with your kids? Come visit one of five story walks installed recently at City Hall and four Newton parks. Or all five!
The story walks are books for children that have had a series of individual pages mounted on signs so that you can read as you walk along. They were chosen and installed by the Newton Community Pollinator Project, a group of city councilors and residents that is working to promote gardens, programs and policies to support our native butterflies, bees and other pollinators that our ecosystem and food supply depend on.
Pollinators–animals that spread pollen from one flower to another–are essential to enable most plants to reproduce. But they are increasingly at risk from shrinking habitat, invasive species, pesticides, climate change and excessive outdoor lighting.
The story walk books include :
The Bug Girl, at the City Hall demonstration pollinator garden, an inspiring true story “about 7-year-old Sophia Spencer [who was] bullied for loving bugs until hundreds of women scientists rallied around her.”
The Puddle Garden, at Cold Spring Park, about a boy (bear) who makes new friends of the animals attracted to his “puddle garden” (rain garden.) Many of the plants and animals (but not bears!) in the book can be found in Cold Spring Park.
Begins With a Bee, the story of the life of an endangered “rusty-patched bumblebee. It is at the Waban Hill/Heartbreak Hill Reservoir.
What’s Inside a Flower, at Wellington Park, is part of a picture book series to interest kids in science.
Wangari Maathai, also at Cold Spring Park (for now), is the true story of the Kenyan woman by that name who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to plant trees in that country. It is better for older children.
The books can be seen on this public list created on Amazon: https://a.co/4WaTajc
For more information about pollinators and the native plants they need, see the Pollinator Toolkit – Newton Conservators
And visit our Facebook page at https://m.facebook.com/NewtonCommunityPollinatorProject/
Thanks to the sponsors of the story walks, including Mayor Ruthanne Fuller, the Department of Parks, Recreation & Culture, Newton Conservators, Green Newton, Mothers Out Front, and “Friends of” groups from Cold Spring Park, Wellington Park and Kennard Park.
The Community Pollinator Project was founded by Councilor Alicia Bowman, and includes Councilor Andreae Downs, Councilor Andrea Kelley, Councilor Alison Leary, Councilor Bill Humphrey, Ava Freeman, Mia Santangelo, PRC Commissioners Beth Wilkinson & Mark Feldhusen, Newton Conservators President Ted Kuklinski, Friends of Kennard Park President Carolyn Kraft , Mothers Out Front’s Cindy Calloway, Jay Werb, Conservation Commission member Ellen Katz, and myself.
This is great! Our daughter can’t wait to go; thanks to NewCommPollPro and all involved!
What a lovely idea. Thanks to all!
I may be located just shy of 1000 miles from Newton, but I love what the Newton Community Pollinator Project is doing to educate kids and adults about the valued synergies among native flowering plants, pollinating insects, and bird life