Virtual Garden Tours: Sometimes on these cold, dreary winter days it feels like spring will never arrive! Why not brighten your day by looking at the videos of NC Cooperative Extension’s Pollinator Paradise Garden in Pittsboro? These virtual tours feature many of the garden’s 225 different species of plants and the pollinators and other beneficial insects and critters that depend on this habitat. You can learn about new species of plants to include in your garden. Click here to view the videos on the Growing Small Farms website.

Online Learning: Vance/Warren EMGVs will host an on-line learning series with the theme “Gardening in Harmony with Nature”, featuring presenters from NC State Horticulture, the NC Botanical Garden, NC Audubon and Cooperative Extension. The series will be held on alternate Wednesdays at 1 pm, beginning 2/11. Get all the details, including the registration link, at http://go.ncsu.edu/mastergardenerchat

Virtual Bee Hotel Build-along, Feb. 27, 2021, 1-3 PM: Bring some happiness to your backyard native bees with your very own bee hotel! Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt will kick off this event with the biology of native bees and then the expert crafters at the Makerspace will guide us on a build-a-long. We’ll end up with more understanding and love of our native bees and a hotel for them to call home this spring. For the build: You can bring your own materials from a list provided at this link. Or, for those who do not have saws and want to avoid a trip to the hardware store, we have a limited number of pre-cut lumber kits available for purchase, too ($25, shipping to NC and surrounding states only). Kits must be purchased by February 15th. Registration and more info, here: https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/event/bee-hotel-build-a-long/ The event is free to attend with registration, open to all, and we welcome anyone who wants to learn about native bees, whether you stick around for the build or not.