Rose Pest Solutions Donates Pollinator Garden to Children’s Museum

NORTHFIELD, Ill. — Rose Pest Solutions announced the opening of The Enchanted Garden at the Discovery Center Museum in Rockford, Ill., as a salute to National Pollinator Month. The Enchanted Garden represents the fourth pollinator garden developed and donated by Rose.

Rose Pest Solutions

“Encouraging pollinator health and working to stave off further decline is so important to our future,” Janelle Iaccino, Rose’s marketing director said. “We can’t really live without them since they are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat. We are on a mission to educate everyone about the importance of pollinators and what we can all do to protect them. When we reach and teach children, they grow up knowing the importance of our pollinator friends and can help make a difference.”

Depending on the time of day, the garden will draw all kinds of pollinators including honeybees, butterflies, moths, beetles, hummingbirds and even bats at night.

These pollinators transfer pollen between blooming flowers, allowing plants to fertilize and grow fruit. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), without them, more than 35% of the world's food crops and 80% of all flowering plants would not survive.

Rose Pest said the garden is also full of fun and whimsical areas including furniture, fence art, native plants that attract pollinators and the Wind Cloud, a giant colorful floral mural.

Garden perennial plants focus on native plants that bloom continuously from spring to fall. The flowers serve as nectar guides with various patterns visible to pollinators that draw them directly to nectar and pollen. Rose Pest said there will be a beautiful array of oranges, yellows, reds, purples and more, all planted to highlight their unique colors and textures. The plants were chosen for their attractiveness to pollinators, not necessarily for their colors.

“We get a lot of questions about what to do when planting a pollinator garden,” Iaccino said. “We tell people it's important to choose similar colors clustered together, because when there's a larger patch of it, pollinators are more likely to go to it.”

Rose President Curtis Rand joined Iaccino, Stan Cope, Ph.D., director of technical services and public health entomologist with Rose, and Kevin Cadwalder, Rose Rockford branch manager, for the garden’s official ribbon cutting.