Meet the newest addition to Assistance League of St. Louis. It is the “Giving Garden” created this year under the loving hands of our members as a pollinator garden. Inspired and motivated by an essentially unused and unappealing plot of soil on the Headquarters site, chairman Bev Pettit foresaw an opportunity! Why not beautify the area and enrich the ‘giving’ agenda of Assistance League?

Today this plot is filled with indigenous Missouri flowers, herbs and plants, and is home to a myriad of buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies ...and even a box turtle!

The garden, resembling a slice of Missouri Prairie, provides beauty and cheeriness, and with the help of Assistance League volunteers tells a story to its many weekly visitors. These visitors include the dozens of Operation School Bell® students who get the chance to visit the garden in the course of being fitted for their uniforms.

The story told by the garden is fascinating.  By sharing their pollen, plants give to the bees, the butterflies, many other insects and to the turtle.  The bees and butterflies then take pollen to other plants to help produce new plants.  These plants will help feed the bees, butterflies and maybe even Mr. Turtle!  Plants can also provide food for us and many animals, and the bees may produce honey. Additionally, plants give off oxygen to help all of us breathe.

A September highlight of this year’s garden was watching four Monarch caterpillars feeding on the Milkweed plant!  And now, while diligently watching for the caterpillars’ metamorphosis into beautiful butterflies, the children are also patiently waiting for the resident pumpkin to turn orange, just in time for Halloween!  The Giving Garden is a “happening” place!