In May 2021, the Poultney-Mettowee and Bennington Conservation Districts planted 221 Vermont-grown native shrubs on Fund for North Bennington property for three purposes:
- To support pollinating and other beneficial insects. These insects’ pollinating efforts are responsible for one out of every three bites of human food plus they sustain our ecosystems by helping plants needed by many other species.
- To support endangered forest-edge dwelling birds (such as warblers, alder and willow flycatcher, yellow warbler, common yellowthroat, and northern waterthrush). The plants provide seeds and fruit for adult birds. They also support insects that are essential food for 96 percent of newborn birds.
- To provide an ecologically viable alternative to aggressively invasive plants (bittersweet, multi-flora rose, buckthorn, euonymous, etc.) encroaching on The Fund’s fields and forests.
Below is a diagram of the six shrub species planted in the Monarch Meadow. (This four-acre meadow is located to the right of the oak bench at the southwest corner of The Mile-Around Woods). A detailed botanical survey of the Monarch Meadow, conducted in 2021 by Nancy Felix, can be downloaded here (pdf).