First, we’re building a pollinator garden with a gift of native pollinator plants from Re-Wilding Louisville, a green initiative sponsored by Idlewild Butterfly Farm, Creasy Mahan Nature Preserve, and the Louisville Audubon Society, and funding from the Mayor’s Give A Day Foundation. The garden offers our neighbors, including Bloom Elementary School students and patrons of the Louisville Free Public Library Highlands-Shelby Park branch, a real-life example of the interdependency of nature and our food ecosystem. It also serves as a demonstration garden to encourage the establishment of pollinator gardens throughout the densely populated Highlands area of Louisville.

Blair Leano-Helvey of Idlewild and volunteer Jo Shipley picking up the plants.

Our other addition is a new set of limestone steps, completed earlier this month, that add a second entrance, and join the first entry built in 2018. The new steps were made possible by a $10,000 Neighborhood Development grant from District 8 Metro Councilwoman Cassie Chambers Armstrong (left).

Here’s a photo chronology of the work done by E-Z Construction: