A crowd of thousands at San Antonio’s third annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival pushed the city’s community wide pollinator gardening initiative into its home stretch this week.

A monarch butterfly stops to refuel at a 300for300 garden. Photo courtesy Candy Roach

Our friends at MP Studio worked the October 21 Festival and collected 51 new sign-ups for the initiative known as 300for300. By the time folks took the time to register online, our goal to create 300 new pollinator gardens for San Antonio’s 300th birthday had reached 206 gardens pledged.

“We can do this, people,” said Monika Maeckle, Director of the Festival and the 300for300. “We’re so close.” Favorable planting weather will linger for a few more weeks, so the time to get busy is now, she added.

Alexander Garcia, Cecilia Garcia Hours and the team at local landscape architecture firm MP Studio created a large map displaying the locations of all the registered pollinator habitats as a feature of the Festival. This allowed 300for300 participants to visualize their investment in pollinator advocacy in San Antonio. Festival guests registering a new pollinator habitat were also able to add a sticker to the map, marking their own contribution to the initiative in real-time.

Now it’s time for the final push: to create 300 new pollinator gardens that will continue to provide insect pollinators and other wildlife a place to rest, refuel, reproduce and raise their families.

Cecilia Garcia-Hours recruits MP Studios principal Mark Padilla for another 300for300 pollinator habitat  at the 2018 Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival. Photo by Archie Solis

If you’re interested in joining our pollinator habitat crusade, learn how, and sign up using the form at the bottom of this post. Or just click this link.

You can also contribute by encouraging others in the community to sign up. If you’re so inclined, consider one of our pollinator habitat signs to educate neighbors on pollinator advocacy. If you’ve already created your own pollinator habitat, please share your photos on the Texas Butterfly Ranch Facebook page. Encourage others to do the same.

Together, we can make change happen in San Antonio. Pollinator gardens embody beauty, function, sustainability and education, all in one small space. They provide  valuable shelter and food supplies for our local pollinators, the ecosystem workers that make one of every three bites of our food possible at a time when insects of all species are in steep decline. They also help educate people on the critical role these pollinators play in our lives while conserving water, limiting chemical use and improving the ecosystem. Check it out and join us by pledging to plant a pollinator habitat today.

Only 94 to go! Please help us meet our goal of 300 pollinator habitats for San Antonio’s 300th birthday.

To everyone who already pledged and planted, thank you for your participation.

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