In 2019, a scientist in search of pollinators completed an audit of an ecologically unproductive, 1,000-acre site in Broomfield, Colorado. As an employee of Butterfly Pavilion, she and the team were disappointed to review the bee and butterfly observations on her clipboard: a single (quasi-invasive) cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae). Amy Yarger was partnered with McWhinney, the company planning to build the mixed-use development on the site. But rather than a focus on residential units, commercial corridors, or market rates, her efforts would anchor pollinators as a defining feature of the future community.

Five years later, the Baseline Development is well on its way. Over 100 acres of the site is built and inhabited: commercial, residential, park space, and streetscapes. Moreover, Baseline adopted the Pollinator Design Guidelines in 2022 to become the world’s first Pollinator District. Those guidelines dictate specific planting strategies which consider plant species, resource spacing, bloom schedules, and pollinator services. Beyond just plant selection, the guidelines consist of five sections: Site Context, Pre-Design Assessment & Planning, Site Design, Operations & Maintenance, and Education. Now, the numbers are in and, even at ~10% build-out, the data on pollinators tells a clear story: Plant it and they will come.

Observations from pre-construction in 2019 through the ~10% build-out in 2024 already show promising impacts, especially in the total number of individual honeybees and pollinators observed. Image: Wenk Associates

Year after year, the numbers look promising – especially when compared to the single cabbage white butterfly on Yarger’s clipboard 2019. There are many ways to sample pollinators and plants and, for a project of this scale, Butterfly Pavilion uses a ‘visual survey’. Amy and her team walk the same route, once in early summer and once in late summer. At a pace of about one mile per hour, they record any interaction between pollinator and plant. They control for weather, disturbances, and human error as best they can. But ultimately, Amy is “…less concerned with the total number of pollinators and more interested in the number of species. The goal is to collect enough data to know how they’re interacting.” Those interactions are more nuanced than just food consumption: the correct plants offer shade, shelter, nesting, or reproductive needs. Each survey takes an entire day.

This ongoing study is not just an experiment happening on the fringes of the development –  this is an experiment taking place in the heart of the development. Pollinators, and their habitat, contribute to the identity of the community. Amy listed some of the unique efforts from McWhinney and Butterfly Pavilion when asked what makes this development  successful in supporting pollinators. Her first answer, the Pollinator Design Guidelines. The second, community. Cohere Living, the community organization at Baseline, hosts events about pollinators, founded a landscape committee, offers classes on garden maintenance, publishes the Pavilion’s annual updates, and more. Amy explains, “It’s one thing to put the plants there. It’s another to have the people who live there appreciate it, to know what’s happening, to get them excited about it.” And they are excited; some residents even contribute to the overall data set by reporting pollinator images and sightings via the iNaturalist app. Amy dreams of cultivating more citizen science in years to come.

In addition to the clipboards full of pollinator families, genera, and species, there is another kind of data that needs collecting. McWhinney committed to fostering habitat for pollinators, but they also have commitments to investors, bond holders, and banks. Kyle Harris, who heads the Master Planned Community Division of McWhinney, was confident they could do both. “When we build places, we have a responsibility to do it right. And we knew our decision to embrace environmental stewardship would resonate with people.” Kyle believes Baseline can be both a market-driven and a mission-driven community where homeowners are part of the story. Yes, the pollinator-focused planting requires higher up-front costs and more detailed maintenance. But that maintenance occurs less frequently, the planting significantly reduces mowing, and it cuts water consumption by about half as compared to nearby developments.

The success is irrefutable and ongoing. Further south, the ‘pollinator perspective’ is spreading: Manitou Springs, Colorado recently elected to become the world’s first Pollinator City. But the success did not arrive without challenges. New maintenance methods, new aesthetics, and new perspectives don’t always come easy. Associate Principal Tyrel Sturgeon of Wenk Associates, the primary landscape architecture firm on the project, spearheads the effort to harmonize the many priorities. “We take the scientific approach from the guidelines and make it feel good for people who live there, recreate there, shop there. Then we have to ensure we can even get the plants we need.” The balancing act between pollinator, developer, and resident cannot be satisfied with “a token pollinator garden” – it has to be systemic and scalable across 1,000 acres and multiple design typologies. Which means “we design for pollinators, but we also have to design for the city requirements, budgets, and constructability.”

Amy Yarger summarized the ongoing experiment to a fine point: “The main takeaway is that plant choice matters. Even in [my] world, there used to be a sense that you just plant something that blooms and it’s all good. Not anymore.” And the data agrees, it certainly matters to the pollinators. But plant choice also matters to the people planting because “great communities happen when residents feel ownership of it” (Harris). The Pollinator Design Guidelines mobilized the community to see landscape as more than flowers,  but as a unifying goal: bring home the pollinators.

Wenk Associates’ role through the life of the Baseline Project includes: contributions to the Pollinator Design Guideline document, the design of the Baseline masterplan, and the design and construction documentation for over 100 acres of built work.

Project contributors:
McWhinney, Developer
Butterfly Pavilion, Pollinator Guidelines
Wenk Associates, Campus Landscape Architect
Matrix Design Group, Campus Engineer
HydroSystems*KDI, Irrigation
Norris Design, Landscape Architect (Parkside West)
Studio Insight, Landscape Architect (Baseline Park 40 Development)