Celebrating Pollinators and School Pollinator Gardens

Happy Pollinator Week and National Pollinator Month! June is a great time to not only celebrate the pollinators that do so much for us and the planet but also to explore ways we can help them.

At the Melinda Vaughn School Pollinator Fund, we’re excited to be part of the increasing pollinator gardening momentum among schools in Minnesota. While school pollinator gardens help to address the critical need for more pollinator habitat, they also offer powerful benefits to students, the school community, and the surrounding community. 

Our organization is now working on our fifth school pollinator gardening project in Minnesota at Cloquet Middle and High School, and we love hearing stories about how pollinator gardens and pollinator programs have an impact on students. One of our projects that began in 2024 is at the Family Center of Columbia Heights Public Schools, part of a larger garden system and program serving pre-K students as well as K-5 students at Highland Elementary School. 

Melissa Trent, agriculture specialist at the Blooming Heights Educational Garden at Columbia Heights Public Schools and partner on the project with the Melinda Vaughn School Pollinator Fund, notes that the pollinator garden has expanded the students’ awareness of pollinators, reduced their fear of them, and increased their protection of insects. 

“Since we’ve expanded our pollinator garden, our K-5 students have an increased awareness of the purpose and types of pollinators,” she said. “They are eager to search for pollinating insects in the garden, and often remind each other to be calm around their buzzing friends. Students proudly share what they’ve learned about pollinators in their science lessons as they visit the garden, and the garden gives them a lab to study and observe them. Pre-K students observe changes that occur in the flora and fauna as they walk by the pollinator garden almost daily. They often report back to me and their parents, excitedly, when they’ve noticed a bee or other flying friend.”

Trent added that one game popular with students is called the Nectar Collector Pollinator Relay, based on this version. It involves students getting into teams and doing a relay race to collect “nectar” using a turkey baster, and transferring it back to their “hives” before handing the “proboscis” to the next “bee.”

In her presentation “Benefits of Nature” at the Children and Nature Network’s 2025 Nature Everywhere Conference in St. Paul, Cathy Jordan, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota and director of research for Children and Nature Network, noted how green schoolyards can promote social and emotional well-being and support academic success.

Green schoolyards, which include pollinator gardens as a component, can also provide economic benefits to school districts, according to a Children and Nature Network article highlighting a 2024 report by former Federal Reserve economist Rob Grunewald.

Among the other benefits of school pollinator gardens, those with deep-rooted native flowers help sequester carbon, increasing climate resilience. 

The benefits of school pollinator gardens are clear, so all that’s left is to begin! Even if you’ve already planted a school pollinator garden, we’ve gathered resources here to help the garden keep growing.

We recently created a pollinator gardening guide for schools to help with garden design, plant sourcing, maintenance, funding, and other aspects of planning and implementing a school pollinator garden in Minnesota. If you’re just getting started, the National Wildlife Federation’s Schoolyard Habitats® Planning Guide is another great resource. For grades 3-5 and 6-8, KidsGardening offers a “Planning a Pollinator Garden” lesson plan and a “Plant a Butterfly Garden” activity designed for preschool students up through grade 12.

As the Monarch Joint Venture notes on their “Garden Grant Resources for Educators” page, there are a number of grants available to help start a school pollinator garden in Minnesota.. Through its Pollinator Habitat Education Program, the Sand County Foundation also offers a Seed Starter Activity for grades K-12 and Pollinator Habitat Grants for high school students. A winter sowing activity can also provide an affordable way to start native plants from seeds.

Among the great pollinator-related curriculum resources for Minnesota teachers is the Pollinators and the Great Sunflower Project curriculum guide for grades 6-12. The free online Pollinator Education Toolkit, created by pollinator experts at the University of Minnesota Bee Lab and Monarch Joint Venture, is another great resource that is designed to provide interactive activities to learn pollinator conservation action steps. The Bee Lab also includes recommendations for outdoor and indoor classroom activities.

For teachers who are looking for additional teaching tips, Teach Outdoors Minnesota offers recorded workshops on a variety of topics related to pollinators, including a Pollinators in the Science Classroom webinar recording for K-12 educators. Jeffers Foundation also offers a free Team Teaching with Mother Nature workshop and other workshops related to pollinators.

Students and teachers at Hermantown High School planted a pollinator garden with help from Shoreview Natives in September 2024. 

Learning from other Minnesota schools’ success with school pollinator gardens can be helpful as well. The MN GreenStep Schools website features several project stories related to pollinators and native plants. Several Minneapolis schools in the Longfellow neighborhood became part of  Minnesota’s first certified Community Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program. Three Bloomington schools planted rain and pollinator gardens in partnership with the Minnesota River Valley Audubon Chapter and with the help of student and parent volunteers. 

If you’re not a member of a school community or a parent and are looking for a worthwhile volunteering opportunity, the Master Gardener volunteer program often works with schools to assist with school pollinator gardens. Many neighborhood associations also organize school pollinator garden maintenance sessions as well.  

Minnesota schools have an important role to play in protecting our state’s pollinators and providing young people the skills and knowledge to take a leadership role in those efforts. Thank you for all you’re doing to provide them with a pollinator-friendly future!

For more ideas about celebrating Pollinator Week with students and young people, check out the Pollinator Partnership’s 2025 Pollinator Week Toolkit, participate in the Pollinator Power Party 2025, or join the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign's Pollinator Week Bioblitz. Here’s to a great summer and school year with students and pollinators!