Community Profile

Pledge Status

Did Not Report

Pledge Date

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Program Year

2023

Links and Uploads

View Links and Uploads

Action Item Report

View Report
Download Report

City of Orlando

Orlando, FL

Buddy Dyer

Mayor

Pledge Summary

Orlando, located within Central Florida, has a population of roughly 285,000. The city has more than 100 lakes, and over 148 parks beautiful parks, gardens, recreation areas, neighborhood centers, and playgrounds. It is home to the world renowned Harry P. Leu Gardens, an amazing 50-acre botanical oasis, as well as the Orlando Easterly Wetlands. Mayor Buddy Dyer of Orlando, FL has committed to saving the monarch butterfly and other pollinators with the signing of the Mayor's Monarch Pledge and looks forward to engaging residents in building more pollinator habitats throughout our City beautiful!

Community Spotlight

Action Items Committed for 2023

Communications and Convening

  • Engage with developers, planners, landscape architects, and other community leaders and organizers engaged in planning processes to identify opportunities to create monarch habitat.
  • Engage with city parks and recreation, public works, sustainability, and other relevant staff to identify opportunities to revise and maintain mowing programs and milkweed / native nectar plant planting programs.
  • Engage with community garden groups and urge them to plant native milkweeds and nectar-producing plants.
  • Launch or maintain a public communication effort to encourage residents to plant monarch gardens at their homes or in their neighborhoods. (If you have community members who speak a language other than English, we encourage you to also communicate in that language; Champion Pledges must communicate in that language.)

Program and Demonstration Gardens

  • Display educational signage at monarch gardens and pollinator habitat.
  • Add or maintain native milkweed and nectar-producing plants in gardens in the community.
  • Initiate or support community science (or citizen science) efforts that help monitor monarch migration and health.
  • Earn or maintain recognition for being a wildlife-friendly city by participating in other wildlife and habitat conservation efforts (i.e., National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat program).
  • Launch or maintain an outdoor education program(s) (e.g., at schools, after-school programs, community centers and groups) that builds awareness and creates habitat by engaging students, educators, and the community in planting native milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants (i.e., National Wildlife Federation’s Schoolyard Habitats program and Monarch Mission curriculum).
  • Plant milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants along roadsides, medians, or public rights-of-way.
  • Convert vacant lots to monarch habitat.
  • Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
  • Facilitate or support a milkweed seed collection and propagation effort.
  • Host or support a native seed or plant sale, giveaway or swap.

Systems Change

  • Launch, expand, or continue an effort to change municipal planting ordinances and practices to include more native milkweed and native nectar producing plants at city properties.
  • Change weed or mowing ordinances to allow for native prairie and plant habitats.