The Catskills Visitor Center in Mount Tremper will host its first Pollinator Fest on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., celebrating the center’s new pollinator garden.
Director Katie Palm described the event as “a new, one-day celebration designed to highlight the importance of native pollinators and inspire our community to protect and support them—starting right in their own backyards.”
The 2,500-square-foot garden was created in 2024 by Jax Hughes of Happy Bear Landscapes. It features 40 species of flowering perennials, grasses, shrubs and small trees, most of them native to the Catskills. “I wanted to create a garden,” Hughes said, “that was inviting for people to move through and spend time in—while also nurturing the other creatures who live in this part of the world.”
Flowers will bloom from spring through fall, attracting “solitary bees, bumblebees, moths, beetles, and hummingbirds,” Hughes said. Host plants such as summersweet and buttonbush support butterfly and moth caterpillars, ensuring the survival of the next generation of pollinators. Hughes will lead garden tours during the festival.
Visitors can also purchase native plants at a sale featuring Barkaboom Native Plants of Margaretville and Flying Trillium Gardens of Sullivan County, which will bring 40 to 50 species. Chris Nilan, founder of Barkaboom, said their plants are grown from seed “from robust wild populations within the Catskills.” Planting local ecotypes, Nilan added, “helps conserve our local flora and best supports the many other creatures that rely upon them.”
Flying Trillium, a demonstration garden founded more than 20 years ago by Carolyn Summers and David Brittenham, rarely sells its plants outside the site. Its mission is “to establish, develop, and steward native plant demonstration gardens, together with the nature preserve and native plant sanctuary.”
Among the perennials and shrubs for sale will be cardinal flower, Joe Pye flower, American angelica, bushy St. John’s wort, northern bush honeysuckle and swamp milkweed—plants that provide nectar, habitat and food for species from monarch butterflies to hummingbirds.
Other vendors will include White Flower Farm of Litchfield, Conn., offering bouquets of native flowers, and sellers of honey-themed goods such as candy and candles.
Grai St. Clair Rice, a beekeeper with Bee Joy, will give a half-hour talk on the co-evolution of flowering plants and pollinators, especially honeybees. She urged people to “stay curious” and reconsider “what is beautiful,” noting that some weeds are valuable food sources for native bees.
For children, the festival will feature a face painter, a craft pavilion for butterfly puppets, and a puppet show by Arm of the Sea Theater. “Riparian Rhapsody: How the Forest Sings to the Stream,” which co-founder Patrick Wadden called a “puppet extravaganza,” begins at 11 a.m.
Where: Catskills Visitor Center, 5096 New York Route 28, Mount Tremper, N.Y.
When: Saturday, Aug. 23, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Contact: (845) 688-3369, info@catskillcenter.org
Margaret Tomlinson is a contributing writer. You can send her an email at reporting@theoverlooknews.com.