>> Hello everybody.
Welcome to us at the Portland Grotto today.
We today have created a pollinator garden, and these wonderful folks have been the lead
in creating that pollinator garden.
So, Tom, would you like to tell us who you are and what you've done here.
>> I would.
My name's Tom Fullmer.
I'm the executive director of Grotto.
Thank you for checking in on the Facebook today.
The Grotto is, it's a gem.
It's a 92-year-old Catholic shrine and botanical garden.
It was opened in 1924.
It's right in the heart of Portland, up Northeast 85th and Sandy.
Not far from PDX.
And as you'll hear, one person can make a difference.
Well one person founded the Grotto because he wanted
to build a sanctuary to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
So he came to Portland as a young Servite priest.
This property was owned by Union Pacific Railroad.
He convinced them to sell them the property for a $3,000 down payment
and started building this 62-acre sanctuary.
It's a beautiful facility.
The upper gardens that you're seeing and the work that the folks from Fish
and Wildlife have done is just a real small portion of the entire Grotto
and the experience up here at the upper gardens.
And we're just very, very happy to have this partnership.
>> Alright.
Mark.
>> Yes. I'm Mark Combelic.
I'm the facilities director.
Been here at The Grotto for 29 years.
And as Tom mentioned, this has been a partnership, a group come together.
And there's some great folks and made this all happen.
Helped transform an area that was really lacking into something that's not only beautiful
but is beneficial to the monarch butterflies and other insects of that nature.
>> Lori.
>> I'm Lory Duralia.
I own Bosky Dell Natives, a native plant nursery in West Linn, Oregon.
And I designed a garden here for The Grotto today to attract
and sustain butterflies, bees and butterflies.
We put in oh maybe a hundred different species of their favorite flowers and plants.
And I think it's going to be just wonderful for the public to see this garden March and April
when everything comes to bloom, and the wildlife are going to be extremely grateful for it too.
>> And Jane.
>> Hi. I'll move over.
I'm Jane Chorazy
I'm with the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
and I'm a public affairs officer in the Portland regional office.
And this idea just came to us when I came to this beautiful facility and saw these gardens
and this wonderful urban setting, urban wildlife.
The fantastic plants, the animals, the critters.
And by working to conserve these wonderful plants and animals,
we found that one person can make a difference.
And when you get a lot of people together like these partners, we can change the world.
There are what, tens and hundreds of thousands of visitors that come here every year,
and this is a way for us to reach out to the community, to restore some habitat,
and to help all the critters and animals that come here.
>> It's going to be a great demonstration garden too for homeowners and kids to get the hand
of what pollinators love and what kind of blossoms they need to survive.
And I think a lot of homeowners will see how beautiful it is and hopefully replicate some
of that in their own gardens to some extent as well.
>> So Mark you have a lot of acreage to cover and not as many people
as I'm sure you'd like to have to help out.
Why is the pollinator garden something that's interesting to you?
Why does it help meet your needs here at The Grotto?
>> Well overall, this particular area that was done today,
it was an area that we had tried various plant materials in and didn't have the best success.
So after talking with Jane and realizing that perhaps native plants
in this particular environment would really be a beneficial way to go.
And again, I think it's something many people can relate to,
especially when we're trying to help the monarch butterfly.
We have a lot of acreage here, and we have other areas yet that we plan on doing the same thing,
planting pollinators, attracting butterflies.
It's a win/win situation for everybody.
>> So, why do pollinators matter, Jane?
>> Well, pollinators pollinate 75% of all the foods that we eat, grains and coffee
and chocolate, and we need to make sure that they're all part of the ecosystem so, you know,
when you have a healthy ecosystem that you're protecting all the species, not just the bats
and the birds and the butterflies but the other critters that live here.
The foxes and the deer.
>> The deer.
>> Yeah. So and for the people that come here to see this beautiful garden
and how important it is to plant natives so that we can get rid of some
of the invasive species that are coming in.
I'd also like to thank one other partner who wasn't able to come here today.
But the East Multnomah Soil
and Water Conservation District has been a fantastic partner
that has helped us purchase all these plants from Bosky Dell Natives.
So I wanted to make sure that we give a shout out to all of our partners.
>> So Tom, what did you think when you were first approached with this idea?
Is this something that The Grotto has done before,
partnered in this way with this kind of intent?
>> Well what I thought was initially I wasn't sure what to expect.
And you know, I got a nice information packet from Jane and kind
of left it on my desk for a while.
I went to Mark later, who's been the director of facilities here for 29 years.
And he connected with Jane.
What I'm finding is that this is more than a win/win situation.
Because part of the mission of The Grotto is that we welcome all people.
And we do have 300,000 visitors a year from all across the globe.
But what I find is we have a pretty small percentage of people that live in Oregon
and southwest Washington that come to The Grotto.
They're still discovering, and the upper gardens are spectacular.
This is just another way to get the word out and to get people to come here.
We're open every day.
The upper gardens are open every day at 9:00 a.m. And so, you know,
I think what we're finding now is this partnership to be able
to be a pollinator for the monarch butterfly.
There's some Christian symbolism between the butterfly and Christianity.
It fits into our mission as a place of peace and prayer and solitude and beauty.
And I just can't think of being a better partnership.
But to answer your question, no we haven't done this before.
So hopefully this is just the beginning.
>> We wanted this to be a sanctuary, not just for the people that come to visit here
but for all the wildlife that reside here as well.
>> Great. Well do you have any other messages that you'd like to share with our public?
>> Well I would like to say thank you to all the Fish and Wildlife volunteers that came out here
and got all our dirty knees today by putting all these plants in the ground.
And it was a wonderful day, a day out in the field.
>> I would like to say too that The Grotto really relies on volunteers.
We are a nonprofit.
We're not subsidized by the church.
We're not subsidized by the government.
We are a self-sustaining nonprofit.
And we could always use volunteers, not just to help Mark with the upper gardens
and the maintenance that takes place here.
But throughout the whole year, if you want to meet people
from all over the globe, volunteer here.
Be a greeter in our gift shop or our visitor center.
There's not a day that goes by that you don't hear multiple languages.
It's really fascinating.
So if you want to volunteer go to our website, check it out,
and especially coming up for Christmas.
Our Christmas festival of lights, we need lots of volunteers.
>> Well thank you everyone for your time, and congratulations
on a successful pollinator garden.
Again, we're deeply appreciative that we could have a group of people come together
and create a sanctuary for pollinators.
Reconnect people with nature in the middle of an urban area
and create a place of peace and restfulness.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.