Pollinator Garden ~ CRC’s “Place to Bee”

Back in 2022, CRC installed a community pollinator garden in Seeley Lake’s rural downtown area. This pollinator garden was filled with native flowers and shrubs, providing habitat and food sources to a variety of pollinator species including birds, bats, bees, butterflies, and moths. This habitat is especially important to resident and migratory pollinators because the area has historically been relatively devoid of sustainable pollinator habitat.

CRC’s “Place to Bee” is located in the parking lot at Lindey’s Prime Steak House & Bay Burgers,
on Highway 83 in downtown Seeley Lake.
A big THANK YOU to Mike and Jennifer for providing this space and for
improving an automatic sprinkler system at the garden which has helped a lot.

Cleaning up, sprucing up, and planting took a lot of work, followed by regular visits to water and check on how the flowers were progressing. Thanks to the Peavey’s efforts, the results have been grand.

Enjoy this collection of photos from the 2025 garden.
- photos by D. Peavey and J. Harrits -

CRC hopes the garden will continue to flourish and bloom in the years ahead. As always the garden needs community support through donations to sustain this project.

A major endeavor, begin to replace existing plywood boxes with new galvanized or plastic raised beds that will last longer before needing to be replaced.

Additionally, CRC would like to allow for more direct access by the general public, while still maintaining control over potential wildlife damage and potential vandalism. For this we’d need a few more volunteers who would be willing to spend an hour or two every now and then, providing access to the garden and answering questions.

If you have an extra moment or two, please sign our “digital” visitor guest log by Clicking Here.

A bit of background on CRC’s Pollinator Garden

Back in 2022, CRC’s Big Sky Watershed Corp Member, Amanda Zelnis oversaw the installation of “A Place to Bee” as a community pollinator garden in Seeley Lake’s downtown area. This garden was filled with native flowers and shrubs, providing habitat and food sources to a variety of pollinator species including birds, bats, bees, butterflies, and moths.

CRC hosted a Kickoff Celebration in May which included presentations on bee keeping, how to establish a pollinator garden and building pollinator houses as well as face painting and informational pamphlets !

In early August (of 2022) amidst the blooming pollinator garden plants , CRC hosted a workshop titled “Common Uses of Native Plants.” This workshop was led by Susan Teitelman, an herbalist and master’s student of ethnobotany at the University of Montana.

September rolled around and the garden was prepped for winter. Unfortunately the next spring, CRC didn’t have an enthusiastic staff member or volunteer to follow up and maintain the pollinator garden, until the summer of 2025. We’re very thankful for Don and Suzanne Peavey who have done a tremendous amount of work on the garden this summer.

We can’t say it enough, A big THANK YOU to Lindey’s for providing this space as well as the numerous local businesses that helped to initially fund the garden.