From roundabout gardens to park meadows, how cities across Canada are encouraging pollinators

It's taken a lot of work to rehabilitate the tiny patch of land at the centre of the small roundabout on Glen Drive and 10th Ave. in Vancouver, but for Katie Berlinguette, it was a labour of love.

"I live in an apartment, like a lot of Vancouverites, and I don't have a patio or a yard," she said, adding that when she went looking for space in a community garden earlier this spring, she found the wait list was long — about three to five years on average.

"During my internet search, I found the Green Streets Program, which is the next best thing."

Soon, she had adopted the roundabout near her apartment that had a single overgrown rosebush that was almost six feet high. Now, the space she passes every day is a pollinator garden, filled with native plants like red-flowering currant and lupine, as well as edible plants and herbs. She also installed a solar-powered fountain. 

She wanted to fill the space with drought tolerant plants, a huge priority, because it's difficult to get water to the space. 

"And then being environmentally conscious with native plants is very, very important, and it's also what people in the neighbourhood have asked for."

For the past few weeks, Berlinguette has been documenting her journey on TikTok in hopes of encouraging others to find ways to garden in the city.

"It's a very busy cycle route and people are stopping every day that they see me and saying thank you."

To Kaushal Rathnayake, a pollinator biologist at the University of New Brunswick, protecting the habitat of pollinators like bees, butterflies and moths is crucial to protecting our own well-being.

Pollinators are an important part of healthy ecosystems, with almost three-quarters of the world's plants relying on pollinators. 

"We are destroying their habitats and we are destroying their food sources and we are creating inhospitable environments for these insects," he said.

"Climate change is a big driver for their extinction, therefore, we have to conserve them and we have to take action to improve their well-being."

No-Mow May, where residents are encouraged to let their lawns grow for the month so pollinators can thrive when they come out of hibernation, is an idea that's caught on across Canada, as have pollinator gardens like the one Berlinguette tends to. But to properly support pollinators, experts say biodiversity is key, and that requires longer-term change on a larger scale.

That's the heart of Jens Ulrich's work as a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, where he just wrapped a three-year study showing that even small changes to urban green spaces — such as adding a small meadow in a city park — can make a huge difference for pollinator diversity.