In July 2025, the 91亚色 community lost a beloved professor, brilliant conservation scientist, and one of the most respected voices for wild bee conservation in Dr. Sheila Colla. Dr. Sheila Colla giving a bee talk in Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat | photo: Matt Forsythe, City of Toronto
Her and her legacy includes key studies on the status of and threats to wild pollinators that have become part of a large and growing field of insect conservation, including for species to receive provincial and federal protection. She participated in the development of public policy, citizen/community science programs including , and conservation science communication in Canada and the United States. In addition to her university teaching, she gave more than 100 educational public talks about pollinator conservation, reaching more than 11,000 adults and 3,000 youth in libraries, community centres, and, of course, green spaces, and, in the first years of the pandemic, many 鈥渂ee talks鈥 for school children over Zoom.
Early in her academic career, when there was virtually no public interest in bees, Sheila was one of the first conservation scientists to study their populations, document the decline of the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee specifically, and successfully help advocate for it to be the first bee listed federally as endangered in both Canada and the U.S..
She used the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee鈥檚 story as a cautionary tale to explain conservation science and biodiversity and teach her university students, the general public, NGOs, and government bodies to appreciate the value, beauty, and vulnerability of all at-risk pollinators, and, most of all, encourage participation in their protection.
A Flower Patch for the Rusty Patched
With conservation scientist Victoria MacPhail and , Sheila produced this poster to encourage people to plant native flowers that bloom from early spring to late fall to provide habitat for endangered native bees.
She later collaborated with author and native plant advocate Lorraine Johnson to write the national bestseller A Garden for the Rusty-patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators 鈥 also beautifully illustrated by Ann Sanderson 鈥 that expands on the poster and provides all the information gardeners need to take action to protect pollinators.
We know that Sheila, through her work, is directly and indirectly responsible for the planting of innumerable habitat gardens providing protection for innumerable pollinators. In honour of that, and in thanks for her research and teaching and for her friendship, students, colleagues, and friends gathered on our first World Bee Day without her, to plant a flower patch for Sheila.
In the Garden
A Flower Patch for Sheila forms a pathway, inviting visitors into Maloca Community Garden. In it, you will find many of the native flowers favoured by the endangered Rusty-patched Bumble Bee Sheila worked to save: beebalm, swamp milkweed, goldenrod, asters.
You will also find some of the native flowers she favoured: coneflowers, penstemon, and pussytoes are a few. And she joined the bees in especially appreciating goldenrod and aster season.
We hope it is a place for human and winged visitors alike to feel welcome and find a sense of sanctuary and all the nourishment a garden provides. - Phyllis K. Novak-Nowakowski
The Native Habitat Planting Guides for A Flower Patch for Sheila
Laura Newburn of the Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation (BEEc) at 91亚色 designed all of the plant beddings. Use these as a guide as you explore A Flower Patch for Sheila or use them as inspiration for your own planting in similar conditions: dry, full sun, South-facing, mounded/raised soil.
The Learning Garden
Because of Sheila鈥檚 commitment to public science education, a portion of her garden is dedicated to learning. Throughout the plantings, we have highlighted and labelled relationships that exist between native pollinators and native plants by illustrating 鈥 with the help of Ann Sanderson鈥檚 beautiful art again 鈥 individual dyads.
When it comes to creating the conditions for native pollinators to thrive, native plants matter.
鈥淣ative plants are generally defined as those plants that have evolved in an area over thousands of years with other plants, animals, climate, geological features, etc. of the region. These plants have, over this long-term, evolutionary time scale, developed associations and interrelationships, networks and interactions with living and non-living features of the region that function together in myriad crucial ways. Many of these plants have long histories of being tended to by Indigenous Peoples, in relationships since time immemorial. It is important to note that the complexities and specificities of these relationships are being discovered, remembered, relearned, and revealed all the time, through the reclamation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, scientific study, and close observation. 鈥 Sheila Colla & Lorraine Johnson
The educational portion of the garden was designed to promote ecological practices and pollinator conservation science. The learning garden within A Flower Patch for Sheila was partially funded by the NSERC PromoScience Award.
Native Habitat Gardens and Food Justice
Maloca is a place for members of the university community and the larger neighbourhood to meet and garden together. It is a public space for growing food and nurturing connection.
Planting native habitat is not only about saving the bees and other wild pollinators 鈥 it is about saving us all. Community gardens are not bountiful without effective pollination. The bees help feed everyone, and they are particularly important in densely populated, under-resourced parts of cities.
Wild bees are also so important for cities. When you think about community gardens, most people don't have the time or money to buy their own hive or rent a hive, but they require a pollination process from the wild. A lot of community gardens tend to be in more densely populated, lower socioeconomic parts of cities. So there's value to the fruits and vegetables that people eat from community gardens as well 鈥 foods that might not otherwise be accessible. There's a food security and food justice component to nurturing native pollinators to allow for that free pollination service that they provide.鈥 - Sheila Colla
You Are Welcome Here
Stop by A Flower Patch for Sheila and the Maloca Gardens to appreciate the plants and the friendly energy 鈥 so very much like Sheila鈥檚! 鈥 and maybe consider joining the EarthWorks crew as a volunteer. Learn more about Maloca and upcoming events and opportunities to plant here.
A special thank you to everyone who was involved with planning, creating, and maintaining this garden.
This garden was made possible with funding by:
