At the heart of the Klondyke Homes community in north Asheville is an island of earth, encircled by a strip of asphalt city buses loop around when servicing the community.

In the summer of 2023, that island was transformed into a pollinator garden thanks to the work of Service staff, staff and volunteers from local non-profit Asheville Greenworks, and students on spring break from Temple University. Earlier this fall, student volunteers from Dr. Amy Boyd’s Forgotten Pollinators class at Warren Wilson College, a school whose student experience is based on a trifecta of academics, work, and service, joined Service biologist Bryan Tompkins at the garden to clear weeds that had grown in while the pollinator-friendly plants are still emerging to fill in gaps.

The outing was the first in a semester-long relationship between the Warren Wilson students and the Asheville Field Office. Throughout the fall, the students will work with Tompkins as he implements pollinator conservation projects across Western North Carolina, which have focused on working with schools to teach students the importance of pollinator species and install pollinator gardens on school grounds. 

Tompkins has previously engaged the Buncombe County School System to develop a pollinator curriculum, but this partnership marks the first time he’ll have college students working with him as boots-on-the-ground in classrooms and school yards across the area.