Sonoma garden tours focus on bees and butterflies

Bees and butterflies pollinate our food and flower plants, and they have been dying off all over the world. If they aren’t here to fly around and pollinate, we won’t have food.

Their massive deaths in orchards and farms throughout California threaten lots of edible crops. Pesticides, growth-stimulating chemicals used in fertilizers and climate change have dramatically dropped their numbers, along with sterilized seeds that are created by large corporations and outlawed in many countries.

To learn how to help cure this problem, you might visit the Monarch Pollinator Garden’s last “Open Garden” of the summer on Monday, Sept. 27, behind the Congregational Church. There you will see nectar flowers, native habitat plants and baby Monarch butterfly caterpillars, and even take home free seeds of plants you can use in your garden to attract pollinators. Lynn Luzzi and Bonnie Brown are the Pollinator Garden managers. 5 to 7 p.m. 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma.

The Valley of the Moon Garden Club will show a PowerPoint on pollinators and how to help on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 6:30 p.m. in Burlingame Hall, 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma. On Oct. 9, there is the garden club’s Fall Plant Sale at Altimira Middle School, 9 a.m. to noon.