Churches get pollinator gardens

BY BILL DOYLE | CFP CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER – When Catherine Fleming decided to build pollinator gardens for an American Heritage Girls project she found what she considered to be the perfect homes for them – five Catholic churches in the Worcester Diocese.
Catherine, 17, of Worcester believed the gardens would carry out the message of “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis’ second encyclical which calls for people to work together against environmental degradation and global warming.
Her family has long been interested in organic gardening and has a compost bin and raised beds with vegetables. She, her mother, Beth, and sister Grace, attended a Northeast Organic Farming Association conference at Worcester State University in January of 2020. One of the programs explained that pollinators were dying off in the Northeast and detailed the need for native flowers and plants to diversify and multiply the pollinators, namely the bees, butterflies and other insects that cross pollinate vegetable and fruit plants and help grow our food.
The fact that one out of every three bites of our food has been made possible by a pollinator, motivated her to pursue the project. She worked closely with Peter Dunbeck, chairman of the Diocese of Worcester’s Environmental Stewardship Ministry, which seeks to implement the tenets of “Laudato Si’” by supplying churches with the tools to be more eco-friendly and encouraging Catholics to be more aware of their impact on the environment.
“It’s a wonderful project showing the embrace,” Mr. Dunbeck said, “of the environment and the beauty of the environment and our relationship with it. It’s important that people in their busy lives see that and participate in it.”
Catherine built the gardens as part of the requirements to achieve the Stars and Stripes Award, the most prestigious honor given by American Heritage Girls, a Christian adventure and leadership program for girls aged 5-18.
The pandemic delayed the start of Catherine’s project by a year.    Catherine built her first garden during an American Heritage Girls troop meeting on May 25 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish at Our Lady of Loreto Church. She constructed the others on May 29 and 30 at St. John Church, St. Peter Church, St. Andrew the Apostle Mission, and Sacred Heart-St. Catherine of Sweden. Up to a dozen other girls and adults helped her at each church.
The award required her to spend 100 hours on the project, including 10 as a supervisor of at least three youths. Her sister Grace helped at all five churches.
“I would not have been able to get this done without Grace,” Catherine said. “She was there every single work day.”
When Catherine spoke to a reporter recently at St. John’s, she wore her American Heritage Girls uniform and her sash was covered with merit badges and service stars. Her mother is her troop leader.
The 100-square foot garden at St. John’s is located on a small strip of land behind the rectory between the back of the parking lot and Franklin Street. Father John F. Madden, the pastor, had talked to a landscaper about dressing up the unattractive plot of land and the next day Catherine emailed him to ask if she could build her garden.
“So, it was really just an act of God,” Father Madden said. “So we responded and she was just easy to work with.”’
Father Madden admits he knows little about pollinator gardens, but he was happy to help out.
“For a long stretch of my life, I thought milk came in cartons,” he said, “so I don’t know anything about it, but I do know that the environment is really damaged and we need to do things to take care of Mother Earth and this seemed to be something that would do that.”
The garden at St. John’s is surrounded by rocks that Catherine and her fellow volunteers dug up and isn’t what you’d call manicured.
“That’s almost the point,” Catherine said. “It’s supposed to be kind of wild, it’s supposed to be weedy. We do have some beautiful flowers in here, but there are also many things which others consider weeds, but those are the plants that are really vital.
“It’s not picture perfect. It’s not supposed to be,” she said. It’s supposed to attract pollinators.
To plant her gardens, Catherine spent all but $3 of the more than $200 she raised online at givebutter.com. The girls also made seed bombs, compact balls of tissue paper filled with organic seeds, and left 100 at each of the five churches for the parishioners to take home and plant. Catherine wrote a bulletin announcement to let parishioners know about the gardens.
Such native, low maintenance perennials as asters, lupines and sweet William were planted to provide a familiar habitat and food source for the pollinators and help increase their population. No pesticides were used. Perfectly manicured lawns covered with pesticides don’t attract pollinating insects.
“Projects like this,” Catherine said, “are part of an effort to restore their habitat and welcome them back.”
Catherine admitted it was “miserable” planting the final four of her gardens in rain and abnormal cold temperatures, but she is proud of how the gardens turned out.
“In every stage of this project,” she said, “throughout the crazy paperwork and overwhelming deadlines, and the rain, the wind and the cold, the only thing that has kept me afloat has been stopping and saying, ‘It’s not about me, it’s about you Lord. This is your work, it’s not mine.’”
“I’m so proud of her,” her mother said. “She worked really hard and it was not easy. It’s a very stringent process to go through all of the paperwork, all of the recruiting of the volunteers. As an adult, I don’t know that I could have done it. I think service to the community and service to our Lord is what was at the heart of it all. So I think she should be proud of herself.”
Catherine works as a summer counselor at Treasure Valley Scout Reservation, an overnight camp in Rutland. She lives on the west side of Worcester with her parents, Beth and John. She was homeschooled and will be a freshman at Boston College this fall. In addition to Grace, 15; she has a sister Frances, 24; and a brother, William, 22. The Flemings are parishioners at St. Peter Church.