The Bee-Utiful Woodinville Pollinator Board Project
This project was a solid community builder. It was easy. Your town can do this!
Watch the video a few times. Notice the smiling faces. Notice how many people were involved...
Woodinville, WA, is a small town. Everyone we spoke to about this pollinator board idea -- City Council, Rotary, our local art community, Pollinator Pathway NW -- immediately got it. The concept is simple with a huge impact. And it ran on volunteer labor.
Why this worked
Pollinators are in trouble. Most people know it. What they don't know is what to do about it, or how to feel connected to the solution.
We felt a pollinator board project fixes that. It gives every kind of neighbor a way to participate. A four-year-old with a paintbrush. A grandparent who hasn't been to a community event in years. A garden club, a scout troop, and the local mayor. Everyone gets a board. Everyone gets a hand in something bigger.
And here's what we noticed: people who paint a board tend to think more deeply about flowers and pollinators... and express that in their own way. Did it have them want to change their yard or start a conversation with someone else? We hope so. Awareness spreads through the doing.
How we did it
A teammate of ours in Pollinator Pathway NW (Linda) saw painted boards in a nearby community (Sammamish) and told a few "doers." Word spread fast. We pulled the doers into a meeting, and two champions immediately stepped forward to get things rolling.
Within a day, we had a reduced-price agreement from our local hardware store. (McLendons -- thanks!!!)
We reached out to organizations that do things. Woodinville Creative District. Rotary. Pollinator Pathway NW. A garden club. We gathered for a couple of hours on a Saturday to paint primer on one face of each board.
All dried boards went somewhere the community could easily access. (Crown Bees.)
The team made a little flyer and spread it around; socially, handed it to schools, and posted it in business windows.
People showed up in ones and twos to take a primed board home. We didn't restrict anything and ran out of boards within a few weeks.
Over the next three weeks, works of art showed up. From four-year-olds. Senior citizens. Our mayor. Formal artists. Everyone in between.
As each person dropped off their finished board, we told them when to come back to help install them -- on an ugly chain-link fence right on our main street.
We made it an event for an Earth Day celebration. Twenty booths showed up: waste management, the water district, pollinator groups, and a dozen other organizations. About 300 people came to drill holes in boards, screw in eyelets, and hang them on the fence.
SO many smiling faces. So many people helped out. So many people walking up and down looking for their board -- or admiring everyone else's.
If you drive past the Bee-Utiful Woodinville Project today, most times you'll see someone walking slowly, examining each work of art.
Community showed up and built something that cost peanuts compared to the beauty and connection it created for this little town.
Again, your town can do this with similar results.
A beautiful look at the finished project, captured by our community member Joan:
Want to do this in your town?
Reach out to Crown Bees. We'll walk you through what worked, what we'd change, and how to get your local hardware store and pollinator partners on board. We have a "lessons learned" document we'll share with you.
Your town can do this. Really.
A community project shared by Crown Bees, Woodinville, WA. Free to adapt for your town.