Pollinator Week 2025

June 16 - 22, 2025

As an award-winning, environmentally progressive community, the Village of Hawthorn Woods is proud to celebrate National Pollinator Week, June 16 - 22, to promote the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and beetles. 

Residents can look forward to educational opportunities, books, recipes, quizzes/puzzles, family activities and more this week, to celebrating some of our favorite non-human residents! All activities will be posted each day on our Village of Hawthorn Woods Facebook page. Please click here to view our Facebook page.

Our community is bursting with residents who go above and beyond in their conservation efforts for these species. During this Pollinator Week, we ask that residents submit photos to the Village highlighting images of pollinators hard at work, yourselves learning about them, or your own actions to support their habitat. You may email your photos to kstewart@vhw.org. The images will be featured in our weekly E-Blast email newsletter.

If you don’t know how to support pollinators, we hope to change that!

Bee City USA Affiliate Initiatives

Did you know Hawthorn Woods is a Bee City USA Affiliate? We want to spotlight some of the projects Hawthorn Woods completed to support pollinator species. 

Project 1: Indian Creek Nature Preserve is a 9.5 acre preserve that, with the help of my many community volunteers, was made into a sustainable woodland and wetland pollinator habitat.

Project 2: Community Buckthorn Removal. Indian Creek Preserve, Woodland Park, and Brierwoods Preserve were some of the many areas where the invasive buckthorn was removed and pollinator seeds were spread in their place.

Removing buckthorn and planting trees helps pollinators by providing them with better food and shelter. Buckthorn is an invasive plant that takes over land and pushes out native plants that bees, butterflies, and other pollinators rely on. When it's removed and replaced with native trees and plants, pollinators are provided with more flowers for nectar, more places to live, and a healthier habitat overall.

Project 3: Our Village began the implementation of our Hawthorn Heritage Outdoor Museum Trail, located within Community Park. This trail features a variety of pollinator gardens and trees dedicated to influential individuals who had an impact in our community. Each year new trees and gardens are added to represent the amazing community members of Hawthorn Woods.

Pollinator Arts & Crafts

Have some fun and celebrate the beauty of our natural pollinators by creating your own pollinator arts and crafts. 

  • Create some Bee Rocks and place them in your garden
  • Hang beautiful Sponge Butterflies throughout your house
  • Get creative with some pollinator chalk art

Pollinator Friendly Cooking

Celebrate how pollinators contribute to the foods that arrive on our plates every day. CLICK HERE to try one of the recipes in this collection compiled by Pollinator Partnership, where ingredients are all products of animal pollination.

Pollinator Puzzles

Test your pollinator week skills! We have some fun pollinator puzzles for you to try out:

Celebrate Pollinators

Here is more you can do to celebrate and help our little worker pollinator friends: