By Jeannine May, Affiliate Director, Keep the Rez Beautiful

Wildflowers provide colorful accents and great habitat in Keep the Rez Beautiful’s Turtle Point Nature Area.

One of Keep the Rez Beautiful’s signature projects is the Turtle Point Nature Area, where we have worked the past few years to transform a vacant four-acre site into a vibrant nature area. We’ve used Keep America Beautiful grants, including several Lowe’s and Waste Management grants, to leverage additional support from local and state partners.

This support has enabled us to purchase more than a hundred native trees as well as plant a variety of native shrubs and wildflowers. The crown jewel of the Turtle Point Nature Area is definitely our pollinator gardens, which boast a variety of wildflowers, including Coneflowers, Guara, Black-Eyed Susans, Shasta Daisies, Coreopsis and Milkweed. Our volunteers helped us plant this garden in spring 2015, and it is doing so well.

We’re excited to continue building on this effort, and we’re especially excited about Keep Mississippi Beautiful’s new Wildflower Trails of Mississippi project. Wildflowers are not only enhance our communities with beauty, but they also provide habitat for wildlife, pollinators and beneficial insects. Let’s keep Mississippi beautiful, one wildflower seed at a time!