Community Profile

Pledge Status

Complete

Pledge Date

Monday, March 10, 2025

Program Year

2025

Achievement

Leadership Circle

2025

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Action Item Report

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City of Somerville

Somerville, MA

Katjana Ballantyne

Mayor

Pledge Summary

Somerville is a dense urban area near Boston with approximately 81,000 residents in 4 square miles. The City has many urban parks, but few large open spaces. The City's administration, City staff, and many residents care deeply about the role a city can play to support the monarch butterfly conservation--even in backyards and small gardens. In 2024, the City published its "Somerville Pollinator Action Plan." The document outlines specific ways that residents and City staff can create habitat and support local pollinator populations.

Community Spotlight

Action Items Committed for 2025

Communications and Convening

  • 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.)
  • 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 gardening leaders and partners (e.g., Master Naturalists, Master Gardeners, Nature Centers, Native Plant Society Chapters , other long-standing and influential community leaders) to support monarch butterfly conservation.
  • Engage with developers, planners, landscape architects, and other community leaders and organizers engaged in planning processes to identify opportunities to create monarch habitat.
  • Create a community-driven educational conservation strategy, initiative, or practice that focuses on and benefits local, underserved residents.

Program and Demonstration Gardens

  • Host or support a native seed or plant sale, giveaway or swap.
  • Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
  • Add or maintain native milkweed and nectar-producing plants in gardens in the community.
  • Launch, expand, or continue an invasive species removal program that will support the re-establishment of native habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
  • Display educational signage at monarch gardens and pollinator habitat.

Systems Change

  • Integrate monarch butterfly conservation into the city’s Park Master Plan, Sustainability Plan, Climate Resiliency Plan or other city plans.
  • Reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals that are harmful to monarchs and pollinators and urban wildlife.