BUGS Pollinator Garden and Wetland

The BUGS native pollinator garden was built by Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students in 2023, and features 28 different plant species native to Maryland. As time passes, you can expect to see the natives fill out this garden space and a variety of pollinators visit when it is flowering. From this site, you can also see the construction of our engineered wetlands, designed and built by Biohabitats and members of the Living Classrooms Foundation's Fresh Start Program. This project hopes to mimic what Baltimore's shorel ines would have looked like hundreds of years ago, and aid in the filtration of the neighborhood's stormwater by pumping in water from Lancaster Canal and cycling it through the wetlands.

Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students (BUGS) is an outdoor environmental education program  that focuses on the urban environment. Students at The Crossroads School learn about gardening, urban ecology, the watershed, environmental and social justice issues, sustainability, and cooking and nutrition through STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) style learning. BUGS complements the school day and gives students the opportunity to develop and apply new knowledge and skills to real-world situations relating to the environment around them through hands-on activities and project-based learning.