What does your morning cup of coffee and birds have in common? Turns out, everything. Coffee farmers are now growing organic coffee beans in forest shade instead of plantation sun, because it prevents widespread clear-cutting of fragile forest, and preserves important habitat for wildlife. Migratory birds, especially, depend on these habitats when they travel from places like Colorado to South America.
In an effort to create more bird-friendly habitats and to unite coffee with conservation, Human Bean has teamed up with Audubon Rockies to build a Habitat Hero garden at the South College location in Fort Collins.
On Sept. 30th, volunteers, Human Bean and Audubon Rockies staff will plant a Habitat Hero garden to create a space that offers health benefits for the community and its wildlife.
“Planting Habitat Hero demonstration gardens provide members of the community opportunities to shape the place where they live. Even in Fort Collins habitat is diminishing in the wake of urban development. The ultimate goal is to stitch the landscape back together with habitat gardens,” said Jamie Weiss, Habitat Hero Coordinator at Audubon Rockies.
The team will remove all of the turf grass currently on the Human Bean property, and replace it with a carefully selected native plant palette that offers a variety of food sources for wildlife. The garden will be in bloom all year long which will help drive pollinators, like bees, away from the Human Bean’s drive-up window, and to their native food source instead.
The space will also feature a bistro table for customers, surrounded by Sunflowers, Agastache, Penstemons, Currants, Echinacea and a collection of native grasses. Not only will Human Bean customers fuel up for the day with a cup of coffee, pollinators and birds will fuel up too with nectar-rich drinks in the garden.
Human Bean will donate ten percent of its sales from the 1822 S. College Ave location to Audubon Rockies and its local conservation programs on Sept. 30th, so stop by to grab a coffee and see the planting live.
Learn more about Audubon Rockies’ conservation projects and how you can get involved in the Fort Collins and greater Colorado community at rockies.audubon.org