Join guest expert Lori Weidenhammer, author of Victory Gardens for Bees, to learn how to transform your gardens into habitat for wild pollinators.

You’ll come away with insight into the factors limiting the availability of food for pollinators and what you can do to help. To support you in the creation of pollinator habitat in your backyard, we will be handing out native plant seeds collected right here on Mayne Island, and providing instructions on how to get these plants established. We’ll also share some preliminary results of our inter-island citizen science project, highlighting some of the pollinator-plant relationships our community has uncovered.

Lori Weidenhammer is a Vancouver-based artist originally from Cactus Lake, Saskatchewan. For nearly a decade she has been exploring the persona Madame Beespeaker, reviving the tradition of telling the bees. She also appears as The Queen Bee at schools and community events. Lori is a member of the Second Site Media Collective and Women Who Run with the Bees. Her collaborative media works with her partner Peter Courtemanche have been shown in Canada and abroad and she has also worked in devised theatre in Canada and the UK. As an artist/educator Weidenhammer works with students of all ages on eating locally, planting for pollinators and community gardening. She is passionate about art that creates and strengthens community bonds and makes the world a better place for humans and bees.