Pollinator Pathway

Welcome to Ashford’s Pollinator Pathway Webpage. We are a small community in the state’s Northeast “Quiet Corner” committed to maintaining our town’s rural character and natural beauty. With the support of the Ashford Conservation Commission, and in collaboration with surrounding towns, the Ashford Pollinator Pathway project encourages residents to get involved in local efforts to save pollinators -- butterflies, bees, hummingbirds – that have been in decline due to habitat loss, fragmentation and pesticide-usage. 

The Pollinator Pathway project collaborates with local gardeners, land owners, town officials and business owners to promote pollinator-friendly practices such as:

• including native plants on your property and managing invasive species 

• avoiding the use of pesticides and herbicides 

• reducing your lawn size and/or leaving some bare ground and dead wood for nesting native bees (including leaving some autumn leaves for overwintering pollinating insects) 

You do not need to be a large land-owner or convert current-use gardens, lawns or fields to all native plants in order to help pollinators. Even small window boxes and native plants left at the edge of pesticide-free fields or lawns are a huge benefit. Please help pollinators survive and thrive by adopting mindful pollinator practices and registering your efforts with Pollinator Pathways. You can also help spread the word by ordering a Pollinator Pathway sign for your yard. 

Registering your efforts with the Pollinator Pathway website helps us work with surrounding towns to map contiguous pollinator corridors between land trust sites, town and state gardens/forests and other private properties. Ashford already has large tracts of protected land -- the Natchaug and Nipmuck State Forests, Wolf Den Land Trust, Joshua’s Trust, Yale-Myers Forest and numerous non-profit camps – making it an ideal site for healthy, sustainable Pollinator Pathways.