Over the summer, the University of North Georgia’s Appalachian Studies Center launched Critters and Blooms, a new initiative designed to connect students with the natural world through local wildlife conservation, preservation and education.
The program was founded by biology professor Chris Leaphart after he spent last spring helping the ASC with its eight-year-old gardening tradition, Hometown Harvest. While Hometown Harvest primarily focuses on food production for the Lumpkin County School system, Leaphart said Critters and Blooms aims to “connect people to the natural world around them through a shared appreciation and love of wildlife and gardening.”
“It’s all in an effort so that we can hopefully better conserve some of these natural resources,” he said, pointing out that the program is currently working to promote pollinator conservation on the Dahlonega campus.
As one of his first projects, Leaphart is applying for grants to establish pollinator gardens across campus, including a registered Monarch waystation. These gardens would give students and community members an opportunity to tag butterflies by putting a small numbered sticker on a specific part of the butterfly’s wing to track them throughout their annual migration.
“My overall goal is to eventually get to a point where we are doing monthly workshops, where students, faculty, staff and people from the local community can…learn a skill or learn something about the nature they’re seeing in their backyards,” he said.
Leaphart introduced the program to the UNG community at an event called Buzz and Bloom in August. He said about 300 people, both students and faculty, stopped by his table in the Health and Natural Sciences building.
“What the event aimed to do was just kind of get our name out there – tell people who we are, what we’re doing and see if it’s something that students find engaging and would like to be a part of,” he said. “Luckily for us, it was a really successful event.”
Participants decorated small pots, planted sweet alyssum seeds and sampled pollinator-themed refreshments made by Leaphart.
On Saturday, Sept. 20, he will host a similar event, called Monarchs, Milkweed and Munchies, during UNG’s Family Day. From 10 a.m. to noon, visitors can stop by his table outside the historic Vickery House to try more pollinator-themed sweet treats and learn about Monarch butterfly lifecycles, migratory pathways and conservation.
For now, while the program is in what Leaphart described as its “infancy phase,” students can follow Critters and Blooms on Instagram or join its GroupMe to get event updates.
