MALP Dinner Meeting & Beacon Award

Creating Pollinator Habitats:
Practical Enhancements for Today’s Landscape

Supporting pollinators in managed landscapes starts with understanding their essential needs, and how our maintenance practices can help or hinder them. We’ll take a close look at current approaches like “No Mow May” and “Leave the Leaves,” including how, when, and where they are most effective.

You’ll gain practical guidance on providing season-long floral resources (food), with a focus on which approaches truly support pollinators and which fall short. Next, we’ll explore nesting habitat, including how and when to manage leaves, stems, and cleanup practices to avoid disrupting essential life cycles. Finally, we’ll address pesticide exposure, highlighting management decisions that reduce risk and create safer, more resilient landscapes.

Beyond the ecological benefits, these approaches offer landscape professionals valuable, client-facing solutions, helping you position pollinator-friendly practices as thoughtful, environmentally responsible enhancements to the landscapes you design and maintain.

2 MCLP education credits, 1 MCH education credit
MDAR CEU credit pending approval.

About our Presenter 

Nicole Bell 
Pollinator Specialist 
UMass Extension  

Nicole is the pollinator specialist and an extension educator with UMass Amherst Extension. Her work focuses on outreach and education related to wild bees, wasps, butterflies, and beyond. Prior to her position at UMass, Nicole spent several years working at the Oregon State University Honeybee Lab, and conducting research on the impact of wildfire severity on native bees at the Forest Animal Ecology Lab. She has a M.S. in Horticulture from OSU and her graduate work focused on wild bees in urban gardens, native plants and their cultivars, and science communication. 

Beacon Award Presentation

The Beacon Award is the most important honor the association can bestow upon one of its members.  This year’s Beacon Award will go to Bob Mann.  We hope you can join us in celebrating Bob and his many achievements, as well as the valuable contributions he has made to our industry. 

SCHEDULE

CEUs: 2 MCLP Education Credits

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