TALK: Attracting Pollinators with a Native Garden

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden hosts a talk by Richard Merrill, current Garden docent, and Cabrillo Community College faculty emeritus, about the process of pollination and the major pollinators such as bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, and moths.

Attendees learn how the different colors, shapes, and sizes of flowers attract their specific pollinators. Merrill reveals garden-worthy California native plants that are especially effective at attracting pollinators, and the importance of home gardens in establishing local “islands of native biodiversity”. Guests leave with the knowledge necessary to create or enhance their own native pollination gardens.

Merrill received his Master’s degree in mathematics and population ecology from the University of California Los Angeles and studied Ecosystem dynamics at University of California, Santa Barbara. He’s emeritus of Cabrillo Community College where he served as the first director of the Environmental Horticultural Department and developed the idea of the “Habitat Landscape.” He has written books on sustainable agriculture, renewable energy systems, and sustainable vegetable gardening.