New Pollinator Gardens at Fairhaven Senior Services Help Restore the Environment—and People, Too!

When Karen Coburn—part of the Fairhaven Senior Services community in Whitewater, Wis.—saw family friend Kristine Zaballos’ new pollinator garden in the front yard of her home in 2024, she knew she had to bring the idea to Fairhaven. So she asked Zaballos to help. 

“Seeing Kristine’s front yard garden … immediately communicated that she hoped to spread the word about the necessity of restoring our environment,” said Coburn. “I can’t thank her enough for her vision and organizational skills.”

In July 2025, a group of interested residents started meeting with Zaballos to develop a pollinator garden. A year later, more than 40 species of pollinator plans have been planted on the campus. All it took was a little bit of planning.

“At one of our first meetings, we took a walk around the Fairhaven campus to look at possible locations,” said Zaballos. 

The location had to 

• Offer residents and visitors a chance to see the garden and its pollinators up close
• Be in a sunny, or mostly sunny, location
• Offer easy access to water, and
• Be easy for staff to maintain.

“The location we selected [in the front of the campus] stood out immediately because it fulfilled all of our conditions and it removed a grassy spot that sloped and was actually a bit of a mowing hazard,” Zaballos added. “We added a second location in the back of the campus that provided a nice viewing area from an existing patio.”

The initial group (residents Coburn, Dan Sable, Sue Weigel, and Chris Lange) quickly doubled in size and now includes Kay Eckert, Sue Chuppa, Betty Brown, and Becca Penn.

This isn’t the first time ecological efforts have been carried out at Fairhaven. For the past few years, Tena Engels, the community’s receptionist, unit clerk, and “monarch Midwife” has spearheaded efforts to introduce milkweed plants to combat the loss of monarch butterfly habitats. Now in its third season, Fairhaven is a recognized Monarch Waystation.

The new pollinator garden efforts were welcomed by the staff and leadership at Fairhaven. They approved the plans and have arranged for and donated mulch, as well as providing lightweight hoses and water sources. Additionally, the front desk staff led by Engels has supported the effort by selling cards and mugs designed by committee member Eckert to benefit the fund.

President and CEO Paul Kuenning, Director of Marketing, Community Relations and Leisure Services Brian Robinson, and Director of Human Resources and Office Services David Gackstatter helped establish a garden fund with Fairhaven Foundation, the nonprofit organization that furthers the quality of life for older adults at Fairhaven. The garden fund allowed the pollinator garden effort to receive donations and grants. To date, two grants have been received: $1,000 from the Wild Ones local chapter and $750 from the Whitewater Community Foundation.

“I am thankful to the Fairhaven staff and residents in recognizing the worthiness of this project,” said Coburn.

The committee’s goal was to create beautiful gardens that people would enjoy watching that also are protective and restorative to the environment.

“So much of what we do with the landscape—growing monoculture lawns, using pesticides, removing habitat and replacing it with cultivars that native pollinators cannot use—is destructive,” said Zaballos. “Taking a small portion of lawn and restoring it to native pollinator-supporting plants is something anyone can do to help, in the spirit of the Homegrown National Park movement.”

Zaballos made the distinction between endangered species and critical species of plants. The new plants in the gardens are all “keystone species” that support native pollinators, she said. “The plants themselves aren’t rare—they just aren’t planted enough. We took care to select a variety of plants—asters, coneflowers, grasses, sedges—to benefit a wide variety of pollinators and to bloom from April through the fall.”

The new gardens include a couple of species of milkweed, which Engel’s Monarch butterflies will appreciate.

The committee worked with the Kettle Moraine Wild Ones chapter to develop the plant list. Wild Ones leads the natural landscaping movement in exploring, teaching, and changing the practice of gardening in communities around the country to using native plants. The plants were purchased from Agrecol Native Nursery in Edgerton, Wis., a native plant and seed nursery that grows and supplies native plant materials to local and regional conservation agencies, non-profit organizations, nurseries, and landscapers. 

In total, 35 flats of 32 plants each were picked up at the Agrecol greenhouse for the Fairhaven pollinator gardens. The front garden alone includes more than 800 plugs (starter plants) of about 25 varieties. 

The committee devised a creative “green” solution to the ever-present problem of weeding: they planted the grasses and sedges between the other plants to reduce the number of places that weeds can take root. 

Sadly, original committee member Chris Lange passed away before the May planting, so the committee is working with Fairhaven’s staff to determine a location for a bench in Lange’s memory. They hope it will become a special place where residents can sit for longer periods of times to watch the butterflies, bees, and other pollinators drawn to the garden.

While the gardens are principally for Fairhaven residents to enjoy, members of the larger Whitewater community use the front garden area as well. “People run, walk their dogs, or bike through on a regular basis,” Zaballos said. “We hope that people visiting the park [across the street] will notice the garden, wonder what it is, and walk over to get a closer look.”

To enhance the gardens’ educational value, durable, easy-to-read plant signs will soon be added, with the hope that curious visitors might incorporate one or more plants into their own gardens once they see the many pollinators they draw. The high-quality signs will denote the common and Latin names of the plants in the garden.

The new gardens received a special seal of approval when the front garden was planted. “They day we planted the garden—May 17, 2026—a Monarch briefly flew over the plants at the end of the day,” Zaballos added. “It was a magic moment we all appreciated. It felt like the Monarch was giving its blessing.”