Spreading the Joy: Pollinator Gardens Feed Baltimore Ecosystem

Planting pollinator gardens on Baltimore urban farms nourishes humans, insects and the entire food web

By Nicole J. Caruth
Habitat Gardening
Mar 26, 2026

A common buckeye (above left, photo by Schaun Champion) alights on goldenrod at Oliver Community Farm. At BLISS Meadows (above, top right, photo by Marielle Scott), a land-reclamation project in one of Baltimore’s most populous neighborhoods, even a potentially pesky garden visitor gets a warm welcome. Johnston Square Farm’s yield, including tomatoes and okra (above, bottom right, photo by Schaun Champion), has been hardier since the installation of pollinator-friendly gardens, staff say.

THE SUN BEATS DOWN ON A GARDEN BED in northeast Baltimore as Lavette Blue leans over, pointing out bees and butterflies perched on white elderberry flowers. At a row of fig trees, she tugs fruit from the branches only to find that birds have already pecked open the succulent purple flesh, leaving it for insects to feast. As Blue reflects on her history with the land, a rabbit darts between bushes for cover, and a red-tailed hawk soars gracefully overhead.

“When we first moved here, there were no birds, there were no butterflies and very few bees,” says Blue, who lives in Baltimore’s Hamilton Hills neighborhood. She and her husband, Warren, purchased their home 40 years ago, when the environment was less welcoming to wildlife. “People would throw their trash out the back door,” Blue says, pointing to the lot beyond her back fence. “It looked like a junkyard.”

The Blues eventually acquired that lot and transformed it into The Greener Garden, a half-acre urban farm with nine hoop houses and raised beds for growing food and flowers. As they cared for the land, a variety of insects and other animals became regular visitors. When their work slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Blue noticed the farm had grown quiet again.

“All the bees and birds had just kind of disappeared,” she says. “I started reading up on pollinator gardens, because somebody told me that pollinators were dying.”

Blue began planting native black-eyed Susans to draw pollinators back to her farm and had some success. A year later, she partnered with the National Wildlife Federation to create her first pollinator garden, which covered 665 square feet and brimmed with native plants, including scarlet bee balm and foxglove beardtongue. Today The Greener Garden is home to five pollinator beds that serve a dual purpose: They create habitat for bees and butterflies, and they bolster crops that rely on pollinators, resulting in bigger harvests.

The Greener Garden isn’t the only farm in Baltimore cultivating ecosystems to feed pollinators and people. Since 2023, four partners have established 10 pollinator gardens at six sites through Pollinators and Produce, an ongoing NWF project that seeks to address environmental injustices. The farms, all situated on formerly vacant lots, now burst with color—a transformation that’s part of the farmers’ larger efforts to bring healthy foods to neighborhoods long shaped by disinvestment while reducing their vulnerability to drought, flooding and invasive species.

Lavette and Warren Blue (in 2016), have spent 40 years nurturing Baltimore’s Hamilton Hills neighborhood, including cultivating The Greener Garden and participating in the National Wildlife Federation program Pollinators and Produce.

Pollinator decline

Pollinators are a boon to the entire ecosystem, benefiting the land, its inhabitants and the planet as a whole. Although honey bees often get the spotlight, all species in North America are nonnative, introduced from Europe. Meanwhile, native bees, including many bumble bees, are equally effective crop pollinators, along with butterflies, birds, moths, flies, beetles and even bats. As they travel from flower to flower to drink nectar or collect pollen, they also transfer that pollen between plants, helping all kinds of plants, including crops, reproduce. But as Blue observed at The Greener Garden, pollinator populations are decreasing.

Studies attribute pollinator decline to the combined effects of climate change, habitat loss, industrial agriculture, pesticides and disease. According to the Maryland Pollinator Protection Plan, pollinator losses have ramifications for the nation’s food supply. Approximately one-third of the foods Americans consume—including staple grocery items such as apples, tomatoes, carrots and pumpkins—rely on pollinators.

Pollinator gardens are a frontline response. For the 10 gardens NWF has helped establish in Baltimore so far, the Federation provided all of the plants and materials, as well as design assistance, with initial funding assistance from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Along with The Greener Garden, new habitats have taken root at Johnston Square Farm and Garden, Oliver Community Farm, Broadway East Tree & Berry Farm, BLISS Meadows and Bethel Farm Lab—each featuring native plants suited to the Baltimore climate. Last year the Pollinators and Produce program expanded to include public workshops in partnership with the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, a network of urban farmers and gardeners.

“It’s all about encouraging food producers to embrace native pollinators as partners in food production,” says Lindsey Walker, senior manager of education and community conservation for NWF. “Baltimore [is] a perfect place to do that because of their strong urban agriculture and greening communities.”

An image of a common buckeye on goldenrod.

A common buckeye alights on goldenrod at Oliver Community Farm. A group installs a pollinator garden at The 6th Branch’s Oliver Community Farm (below).

Historical disinvestment

Baltimore is a hub for urban farming, in part because the city has around 20,000 vacant lots. At the same time, some of its most blighted neighborhoods lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables—a reality tied to redlining, the discriminatory practice of denying mortgages and other financial services to residents of specific areas based on race or ethnicity. More than a quarter of area residents experience food insecurity—twice the national average—with Black residents experiencing it at a rate more than double white residents, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In 2015 the Morgan State University professor Lawrence Brown coined the term “the Black Butterfly” to describe how under-resourced, majority Black neighborhoods fan out across the eastern and western parts of the city in a shape resembling butterfly wings, while wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods form an “L” between them. As in many cities, access to fresh produce closely follows lines of wealth.

“When you get to the Black Butterfly, both on the east and west sides, the resources are scarce and the challenges are high,” explains Darriel Harris, a food systems researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johnston Square, a neighborhood located south of the historic Green Mount Cemetery, is a prime example. Harris says the area is emblematic of food apartheid: a human-made phenomenon he characterizes as a combination of low incomes, limited car ownership and the absence of a grocery store.

An image of people installing a pollinator garden.

Enter Johnston Square Farm, a local source of produce with about 6,000 square feet devoted to pollinator gardens. On a warm fall afternoon, rows of rainbow chard push through the soil, leaves glistening in the sun. Plump eggplants and tomatoes dangle from leafy vines, while bees buzz about, gathering pollen from the lanky stems of native yellow goldenrod, a perennial herb. Clusters of purple beautyberry, bluestem grasses and tall yarrow sway gently as a woman sits in meditation, surrounded by the daytime chorus of cicadas.

Established in 2019, Johnston Square Farm is one of three east Baltimore farms created by The 6th Branch, a nonprofit founded by military veterans who began by clearing vacant lots in the city. When the organization asked neighbors what they wanted to see on those newly opened spaces, many requested fresh produce, according to Grace Champion, The 6th Branch’s community farming program director. The farms grew from that response.

Johnston Square Farm occupies three adjacent lots, two of which were once littered with the rubble of razed row houses. Demolition crews “were likely filling in the basements with construction site refuse,” says Champion, pointing to the easternmost lot. “Even though it rains a lot here, the water won’t go very deep in the soil, and eventually it will just run off into the street.”

Pollinator gardens developed in partnership with NWF have helped address that challenge. Planted along the farm’s borders and low-lying areas, the gardens act like natural dams, keeping water on the lots to hydrate thirsty crops. The results? Higher yields and hardier plants. Champion says she’s seen tomato vines heavy with ripe fruit well into the fall, when they typically struggle. The uptick in pollinator activity even may be improving flavor. “The food does taste better—because it’s easier to find and pick!” she says with a laugh.

The pollinator gardens also have boosted biodiversity, drawing monarchs, grasshoppers, praying mantises, spiders, snakes, moths, field mice and finches to the farm. In the mid-Atlantic, where the invasive spotted lanternfly threatens crops including apples and grapes, such diversity is especially valuable, as predators like praying mantises and eight-spined soldier bugs may help keep the insect in check. That natural counter not only strengthens the ecosystem but also lightens the load for farmers. “We have to do less in the garden when we have insects around us doing it,” Champion says.

An image of Nora Dowdell, a volunteer with Johnston Square Farm, distributing free produce to the community.

Johnston Square Farm distributes free produceto the community (pictured). Atiya Wells (below), founder of Baltimore’s Backyard Basecamp, partnered with NWF to install pollinator gardens at BLISS Meadows.

Public education

About 4 miles northeast of Johnston Square Farm, the nonprofit Backyard Basecamp is seeing similar benefits from its pollinator gardens. Located in Frankford, one of Baltimore’s most populous neighborhoods, the organization manages BLISS Meadows, a land-reclamation project spanning three connected sites: a farmhouse on half an acre, a 2.5-acre diversified farm and a 7-acre formerly abandoned city park.

In front of the farmhouse, two densely planted pollinator gardens explode with color—sunflowers, elderberry, sweetgrass, goldenrod and more—creating a stunning visual welcome. “I knew I wanted to have a lush garden in the front to show people what a native garden and a pollinator garden could look like,” says founder and executive director Atiya Wells, who partnered with NWF to install the beds in 2024. “We get so many compliments on the farmhouse gardens.”

An image of Atiya Wells in the BLISS Meadows grow space.

Created to address the neighborhood’s limited access to fresh produce and green spaces, BLISS Meadows grows vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries; raises goats, chickens and honey bees; and cultivates fresh flowers for market. Pollinator gardens are part of the organization’s larger mission to heal ancestral wounds by connecting Black, Indigenous and people of color to food, land and nature. The more people who plant for pollinators, the stronger the local ecosystem will be.

Wells says visitors are often inspired to start their own pollinator gardens, but many admit to being intimidated by the “overly manicured” displays at local arboretums. She jokingly calls herself a “lazy gardener,” committed to doing as little maintenance as possible, and sees the farmhouse gardens as a model for working residents who want to support pollinators without investing much time or money.

Beyond serving as education tools, the pollinator gardens provide breaks for monarchs during their migrations to and from Mexico. “If we’re going on a road trip, we’re gonna stop at a rest stop to use the bathroom and eat something,” Wells says. “Pollinators also need to do the same thing.” While the pollinator plants at BLISS Meadows skew toward native species, Wells and her team also have added nonnative, noninvasive species, like zinnias, for visual appeal. In Baltimore, Wells says, “providing more beauty can only do more good.”

An image of Grace Champion at Johnston Square Farm.

Grace Champion of The 6th Branch oversees cut-flower and vegetable production at Johnston Square, as well as pollinator gardens.

Community health

Back at The Greener Garden, Lavette Blue gently runs her fingers over the yellow petals of the season’s last black-eyed Susans, planted against the exterior of her hoop houses. An array of food flourishes inside: fiery jalapeño peppers, plump cherry tomatoes, and tall green and purple callaloo. At 77 years old, Blue says she’s lucky to be alive to witness this abundance.

In 2020, she fell ill with an unknown sickness, and the following year, she was hospitalized with COVID-19. “It took me a long time to recover,” she says, noting a subsequent battle with long COVID. These days, Blue tires easily and has had to slow her pace on the farm. She credits that slowdown with helping her recognize the absence of pollinators on the land, ultimately inspiring her participation in the Pollinators and Produce program.

Blue’s experience echoes a larger truth the pandemic laid bare: Human health is inseparable from the health of the environment. As COVID-19 forced people to slow down and examine the world around them, many began to notice the interconnectedness more clearly. If you ask Blue, pollinators, whose work sustains our food supply, are an ongoing reminder of this fragile relationship.

“The way the animals go is the way we go,” she says, standing in her backyard. “If they die, we go along with them.”

NWF Priority

Pollinators and Produce

National Wildlife Federation’s Pollinators and Produce is growing in Baltimore. In 2026 so far, NWF has awarded pollinator habitat mini-grants to three community gardens and distributed 10 habitat starter kits to community members, with plans to install pollinator meadows at the Farm Alliance’s Black Butterfly Teaching Farm later this year. Learn more.

Read about writer Nicole J. Caruth and photographer Schaun Champion.