By Keith Bruno
The Weminuche Audubon Society, Audubon Rockies, and Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership (GGP) would like to welcome the public to a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday, June 23, at 11am to celebrate the installation of the Terry Hershey Memorial Garden.
The garden is located on the west end of the GGP site downtown along the San Juan Riverwalk and is named in Terry’s honor, as she was a steadfast supporter of both local conservation efforts and sponsoring environmental education opportunities at she and Jake Hershey’s Four Mile Ranch.
This collaborative project seeks to bring attention to the vital role that native plants play in supporting local food webs. Birds, other pollinators, and wildlife at large rely and thrive on the plants that they’ve co-evolved with on the landscape. This demonstration garden is aimed to provide ideas for plant selection for the backyard gardener. To reinvigorate our neighborhoods and communities with ecological connectivity, planting native plants is one of the strongest actions one can make.
Additionally, the garden will serve as an interpretive site for folks to become more familiar with many of the local and regional native plants seen while out on hiking trails in Pagosa country.
The garden is a certified Gold-standard through Audubon’s Habitat Hero program. To learn more about this program and how to wildscape and certify your backyard, visit rockies.audubon.org/habitat-hero.
Celebrate Native Plants Week with us during the last week in June by visiting local nurseries and inquiring about sourcing native plants for your garden…
Keith Bruno is Southwest Colorado Community Naturalist with Audubon Rockies.