EMPOWERING YOUTH TO HEAL
THE PLANET
Events 2023
April 12
May 9, 10, 11
May 14
May 17, 19, 24, and 26
Outdoor Education Brings Students in Touch With Nature
Meadowscaping for Biodiversity (MS4B) is dedicated to bringing students outdoors in nature; empowering them to take positive steps to restore biodiversity in their communities; and helping them to develop life and career-readiness skills.
MS4B promotes “intentional gardening” — gardening with pollinator-friendly, perennial native plants — with the intention of building healthy, resilient communities. We do this through after-school and summer programs for youth, as well as by providing topical presentations on biodiversity, climate action, and native-plant gardening; one-on-one consultations on curriculum development with teachers; and specialty landscaping services — using native plants — for property owners.
Ready to support biodiversity?
MS4B installs native plant gardens and meadows that soak up storm water, sequester carbon, and slow down the progress of the climate change monster. Installing native plant gardens in your yard might seem daunting. We’ll give you the benefit of our years of experience. We’re trained to know which plants are native, why you need them, and where to plant them. Do you have those ugly invasives all over? We’ll pull off the thick vines and pull out the thicker roots. You won’t get cut by the sharp thorns of Multiflora rose or struggle with any of the other aggressive plants when you hire us.
Contact us! We offer landscape design services that will give you the garden of your dreams–a garden that is beautiful and beneficial for nature. Because you’ll spend less money on plants, water, mulch, and maintenance, your neighbors will envy you. And the good effects will grow as neighbors also plant for the future.
MS4B at the William Flagg Homer House in Belmont
Students from Belmont’s High School and Chenery Middle School earned community service credits by helping the Belmont Woman’s Club in the first step of transforming the grounds.
MS4B's Flagship Program
In MS4B’s Youth Environmental Entrepreneurship Program (YEEP), each summer college interns coach high school teens age 15-19 to build a business where they are paid to learn about the benefits of pollinator-friendly native plants and then sell and install them for customers. See Why Plant Meadows? and Why Native Plants? (Hint: Insects eat plants, which are the base of the food web.)
Through meadowscaping, we empower participants to become stewards of the Earth and to take charge of their future.
Since YEEP’s debut in 2017, more than 100 high school and college students have learned how to build a service business to sell/install native plant eco-systems gardens and remove weeds/invasive plants in the communities of Belmont, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham.
Through all our programs and installations, more than 450 students and adults and hundreds of bees, butterflies, birds, insects, worms, and mammals have benefitted from the 10,000 sq. ft. of ecosystems gardens MS4B youth have created since the founding of MS4B in 2014.
Why Native plants?
Ready To
COLLABORATE
Meadowscaping helps to educate you on how to become better gardeners, integrate more native plants into your garden for biodiversity, and help pollinators to preserve the natural ecosystem.
Some of our sponsers...
HELP FUND OUR
ESSENTIAL PROGRAMS
- Curriculum development and fun, engaging activities
- Educate citizen scientists and stewards of the Earth to try to resolve challenges to the environment and human society.
- Participants repurpose monocultural turf lawn into meadows–productive, attractive ecosystems gardens with native flowers, shrubs, and grasses.
- Increase biodiversity, pollinator and wildlife habitat to build community resilience in the time of rapidly changing climate
If you wish to donate to Meadowscaping, please visit the donation page for the New England Grassroots Environment Fund, our fiscal sponsor. Fill out the form. Under PROGRAM, choose Fiscal Sponsored Group; then type in our name MS4B in the next entry block. Finish the form. Click on DONATION Button on top right. The program will send you an automatic receipt after your pledge has been received.