May 25 – Clara Maneely worked intensively.
The 11-year-old, a fifth-grader at Aspen Community School, was pushing wheelbarrows of mulch into the empty garden space in Alto Park on Tuesday morning. She then grabbed a rake to spread the pile into an even layer.
In the coming seasons, the strip of land, located between the park’s tennis courts and recreational fields, will receive a major makeover.
A team of master gardeners, volunteers and youth – as well as city parks officials – have worked together to create the beginnings of a pollinator habitat. On Tuesday morning they met to further condition the soil with layers of mulch, with plans to plant in the fall.
Maneely, an Alto Park regular, is among those excited to see how pollinator habitat develops.
“It also helps our communities,” she said.
To Pollinator Habitat Planning Committee member Doug Conwell, Alto Park seemed like the “perfect position” for a pollinator garden.
It offers an abundance of human neighbors, from regulars of the Mary Esther Gonzales Senior Center and Bicentennial Pool to the students of Aspen Community School and the National Dance Institute of New Mexico. All those park people, Conwell thought, could learn more about pollinators and their role in the environment.
Meanwhile, he added, the park’s location along the banks of the Santa Fe River will ensure that the pollinators attracted to the garden can take advantage of the wetland habitat’s diversity of flora and fauna.
“It just seemed like it was a perfect storm — in a good way,” Conwell said.
He gathered a team of master gardeners, volunteers and park staff to figure out how they could work together to create a pollinator garden – and they rallied the park’s users and neighbors to help in the effort.
For Margo Shirley, a volunteer, the project was particularly personal. Alto Park’s full name is Ron Shirley Alto Park, renamed in 2021 in honor of the parks’ longtime department head – Margo Shirley’s late husband.
Margo Shirley vowed not to let her husband’s name or the park disappear. So she, along with a group she called her “compadres,” joined the team that built the pollinator garden to ensure the park would stay alive with butterflies, bees and hummingbirds.
The city parks department also became involved in removing rocks from the pollinator garden area and installing irrigation lines, said Rick Espinosa, parks superintendent for District 1, which includes Alto Park.
The new garden will be a win-win for pollinators and people, Espinosa said: Park upgrades often attract new visitors.
“It will definitely enhance the look of the park, make it look better and make people want to come and see what we’re doing,” he said. “So it’s positive to get people to the park.”
Conwell also approached teachers at Aspen Community School – located across the street from the park – about the possibility of collaborating. The project would allow students, teachers and families at the public school, which serves approximately 350 students in elementary through eighth grade, to use pollinator habitat as a learning opportunity.
Joseph Ortega, an art teacher in Aspen and the leader of the school’s garden club, got his students involved.
Gardening has educational value, Ortega said. It’s a tactile science lesson that becomes immediately relevant to students’ lives – in many cases because they can taste what they’ve planted.
It will also encourage its students — who can follow the garden’s progress through eighth grade — to become good stewards of their environments, Ortega added.
“The more of this the better,” he said.
But Aspen Community School students weren’t the only ones participating in the pollinator garden. A youth soccer team that usually plays in the park spread cardboard and mulch around the space, and local businesses donated supplies and snacks for the volunteers.
The volunteer crew plans to spend the summer raising money to purchase plants before planting in the fall, Conwell said.
“This will require care, maintenance and ongoing care,” he said.
Fortunately for Conwell, there is a team of students and volunteers willing to do just that.
