It was wonderful (thankfully rain-free!) morning in Apex on May 18th, celebrating the grand opening of the sustainability-focused community garden, Simple Gifts Community Garden. SWC has partnered with the garden over the past year with a native plant sale, pollinator plantings, bluebird-house installations, and a purple martin house assembly installation. This garden uses environmentally-friendly methods to produce a wide variety of organic vegetables and fruits for distribution to local foodbanks, while also building out pollinator beds with over fifty different species so far, and more coming!
Mayor Jacques Gilbert cut the ceremonial ribbon with Pastor Laura Catherine from the sponsoring Apex UMC, and Angie Field represented the YMCA of the Triangle, which generously provides the land the garden shares.
SWC had not one, but two exhibition booths at this event: one for Pollinators and one for Wildlife at the garden! Families and kids of all ages had fun and were very engaged in all the activities at each of these exhibits. John and Bill led tours of the pollinator beds, while Katie and Dave led the activities at the booth, some of which were re-purposed from Kids in Nature Day, like matching pollinators with their preferred plants or playing “Pollinator Jeopardy!” Courtney and Cissy led the activities at the wildlife booth, which included purple martins, bluebirds, frogs/toads, bats, and snakes. Jeff also displayed examples of SWC’s bluebird house assemblies, a bat house, and an owl house.
Please keep an eye on the calendar on this website and join us for upcoming workdays to put these conservation messages into action!
South Wake Conservationists 