WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Three city departments worked together to make the City of Warner Robins an official Bee City USA community.
This means the city will support bees by creating bee-friendly habitats around town.
We sat down with each department head to see what all the project is about.
The City of Warner Robins is the 17th designated Bee City USA community in Georgia.
City employees are about to get busy, improving some of Warner Robins' main streets. Some of them, like Craig Clifton, are buzzing with excitement.
Clifton said, "Once that initial phase of growing starts, that's when we can start seeing the fruits of our progress."
The city's public works and stormwater departments and Keep Warner Robins Beautiful are going to till, plant, and water 20 types of flowers for the median strips on Russell Parkway and Watson Boulevard. It's not just going to beautify the drive for motorist. Clifton says it's going to take some of the sting out of his crew's job.
Clifton said, "It's usually about a three-and-a-half, four-day project in mowing Russell Parkway. Just taking those medians out alone would say maybe two , two-and-a-half days of work for public works."
The flowers will beautify the entryways to the city and help support the fuzzy, noisy population. It's all about being good stewards of nature.
Bowen said, "Bees are responsible for a third of the world's food, so without bees and without pollinators, we don't exist. It brings a habitat back to our pollinators, which is extremely important for our environment."
Krag Woodyard with Stormwater says the flowers will also prevent roadway flooding.
Woodyard said, "The tilling of the soils and getting rid of a lot of compaction of the soils along the roadways is going to help with city runoff and absorption of runoff and help out of city streets here."
"Depending on the summers we get, springs and summers, we can get a lot of rain or none at all, so that's the initial hard part of the project is getting those seeds and getting them in the ground," Clifton said.
They're going to start working on this project over the next couple of weeks. The city will spend about $6,400 for the entire project. Bowen says the first year will cost the most, but after this year, the flowers will come back next spring.
Bowen says some of the flowers will not be higher than 24 inches. Clifton says they will be low so it doesn't interfere with traffic. They've bought African Daisy, Black-eyed Susans, California Poppies, Chinese Forget-Me-Nots, Baby's-Breath, Siberian Wallflower, and Coneflowers.
The city is asking people and businesses to donate their coffee grounds and manure. They'll use your donations as natural fertilizer. If you can donate, call Keep Warner Robins Beautiful at 478-929-7258.
Warner Robins mayor and council passed the Bee City USA designation resolution on February 7.