Graphic by Penelope Taylor ’20
BY SAVANNAH HARRIMAN-POTE ’20
Students moving into 1837 Hall and Mandelle Halls this year may have noticed that Mandelle Hill is sporting a new, all-natural look. In an effort to recoup pollinator populations, the Miller Worley Center for the Environment (MWCE) has declared Mandelle Hill a “no mow zone.”
Since late spring, Facilities Management has ceased mowing Mandelle Hill, though it still maintains a path up the slope to Prospect Hill. This will allow pollinator-friendly meadow grasses to grow, creating a “pollinator garden.”
In April, the Associated Press reported on a study assessing the health of wild bee populations in New England, in which researchers at the University of New Hampshire found that 14 species’ populations had declined by nearly 90 percent.
Carey Lang, Assistant Director of MWCE and co-chair of the Mount Holyoke College Sustainable Land Management Subcommittee, spearheaded the College’s “no mow zone” project. The subcommittee conceived of the idea after attending the Western Mass Pollinator Network’s Sustainable Land Care Symposium at Smith College last January.
“There were a lot of schools there and some described how these projects were working on their campus, which inspired us to consider putting in a few at Mount Holyoke,” Lang said.
Aside from the ecological benefits, the pollinator habitats reduce Facilities Management’s campus workload, as well as the emissions from lawnmowers.
“There’s no reason why every single space on campus needs to be perfectly manicured and presented in an unnaturally tame and controlled way, especially areas of campus that are a little off the beaten path,” Lang said. “It’s mostly a societal expectation that we mow a lot of these edge habitats weekly, but [it’s] definitely not necessary.”
Martha Thompson ’22 lives in South Mandelle Hall, overlooking Mandelle Hill. She supports the new “no mow zone” project.
“It’s important that Mount Holyoke explores new ways that it can be more sustainable,” Thompson said. “There’s plenty of other green space on campus that students can use.”
Elizabeth Andrian ’20 disagrees. She chose to live in 1837 for her senior year in part because of its proximity to Mandelle Hill, but now feels that the space is less accessible to students. “It was a spot for students to gather and socialize, and now we don’t have that,” Andrian said.
Mandelle Hill is one of three pilot pollinator habitats on campus: another is near the Kendall parking lot. The third “no mow zone” is on a hill near the athletic fields, which neighbors the Restoration Ecology Program (REP) Project Stream site. Lang hopes that the REP will encompass pollinator habitats in the future so that students can study New England’s native meadow flora and fauna.
In the spring, the Sustainable Land Management Subcommittee will collaborate with the Botanic Garden to plant specific native and pollinator-friendly species across campus. Some wildflowers are already planted outside Talcott greenhouse.
Over the past year, Assistant Horticulturist Lily Carone ’08 has redesigned and replanted the conservatory’s foremost flower bed to feature New England wildflowers. The bed now contains cultivars of native pollinators such as echinacea, goldenrod and wild bergamot.
A study published this May in the academic journal Rhodora found that the Mount Holyoke and Skinner Range has lost approximately 10 percent of its wildflower species. The quiet, unnoticed extinction of native flora motivated Carone to put such wildflowers front and center in her design.
“I felt there needed to be a message in the design of the bed,” Carone said. “The real driving philosophy behind that bed was that we would use plants native to the region.”
Carone hopes that seeing wildflowers around campus will increase students’ familiarity with New England’s unique ecology and inspire them to get involved.
“If we could establish a mission on campus to grow not only native plants, but with climate change in mind ... thinking about how do we increase pollinator habitats, how do we become less reliant on outside and fossil fuel-based companies to grow our plants?” Carone said. “The more vocal that students are about these issues, that’s the only way that anything will change.”