Hearts broke everywhere when the bright light of Jerry Garcia was extinguished in 1995. Chances are, he’d love that his legacy is living on through the Grateful Dead's new efforts to recharge the declining bee and monarch populations by gifting Deadheads.
Garcia’s bandmates Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann, plus John Mayer, are touring the U.S. this summer and will give fans the chance to repopulate pollinators by introducing “Participation Row.”
Participation Row is their charity outreach that is a series of tents that contain info and presentations from a variety of causes.
One of them will present the most recent project of the Jerry Garcia Foundation.
To make bee and butterfly repopulating more like fun and less of an effort – the Foundation will pass out free milkweed seeds and garden pollinator kits to the first 300 music fans that visit their tent at each venue. The seed packs are gifted courtesy of the Save Our Monarchs Foundation.
But that’s not the end of the activism.
Those who plant the seeds are encouraged to upload their photos to the Jerry Garcia Foundation’s Facebook page with the following hashtags: #SaveTheMonarchs, #SaveTheBees, and #RippleEffect.
The garden photos will be part of an interactive art project and will further help promote efforts to save pollinators.
Keelin Garcia, Jerry’s youngest daughter and co-founder of the Jerry Garcia Foundation, said:
Save Our Monarchs has generously donated thousands of Non-GMO milkweed seed packets and pollinator garden seeds. We are sharing these seeds in hopes that gardens will be planted to nourish butterfly and bee populations across the US.
The initiative coincides with Garcia’s birthday coming up on August 9th, with the addition of National Pollinator Week running from June 19th-25th.
Previously the foundation donated some of Garcia’s art work for Save Our Monarchs and the urban beekeeping organization Honey Love.
Would Jerry have stood behind the effort to save the bees? Manasha Garcia, Jerry’s wife and co-founder of the foundation said:
Jerry was an environmentalist who advocated for the preservation of the rainforests and the coral reefs. It is a blessing to continue this work in his honor.
Source and Image: GNN