For the third year in a row, Blue Ridge Elementary School teacher Tori Arp has led the school’s Agrisplorers Club in making a difference in the environment. Club members from the third, fourth and fifth grades planted trees and created a pollination garden at the Fannin County Recreation Park March 27 in partnership with Noontootla Creek Farms and the Fannin County Chamber of Commerce.
The trees and garden are designed to create pollinator friendly habitats for fireflies. The garden will feature gold rod, joe-pye weed and bluesteem plants.
“It’s not just a pollinator garden, which we need, but it’s also helping our fireflies,” said Arp. Lights off, Fireflies On, is the focus, she said.
Fireflies are pollinators and the population is on the decline. The Agrisplorers’ goal is to create habitats around Fannin County. “We want to help to continue to support that operation,” Arp said. The club are working with the Blue Ridge Business Association’s beautification project. They will be building a pollinator garden box downtown.
“We try to create habitats at shared spaces,” Arp said.
The project at the recreation park allows kids to learn to protect native plants “because that is what native polinators need as well,” Arp said.
Most of the kids have been to the park multiple times for games and other things, “I thought it would be so special for them to come back with their parents and see the progress, see the trees they have planted, see the improvement in the firefly numbers when they are here at night in the summer,” Arp said. “It’s just creating knowledge.”
Arp started the Agrisplorers program when she was a teacher at Fannin County Middle School. She brought the program to BRES when she became a teacher there. AT BRES, students can choose a bonus club they want to join. “It’s a great way for us at Blue Ridge to help the kids take responsibility for learning something based off their own interest,” Arp said.