Rescheduled to Oct 1

Due to the rainy weekend coming up, we've decided to reschedule our Volunteer Planting event for Sunday, October 1, from noon to 3pm. Join your land trust as we plant a native pollinator plant rain garden at Hamden Town Center Park. ​Our friends at Save the Sound are installing a stormwater pollution mitigation system at the park. We will be planting a rain garden as part of that green infrastructure installation thanks to a generous grant from the Claire C. Bennitt Watershed Fund. Come join up with families, friends and local students as we dig the plants in and find out about the importance of reducing harmful stormwater pollution through rain gardens, bioswales and other green infrastructure techniques. This planting event will take place rain or shine. Heavy rain cancels. Please check back here or on our Facebook page if in doubt. Plan to wear sturdy shoes, old clothes and sunscreen. Bring water bottles to refill. Also bring gardening gloves, trowels and shovels if you have them. If you don't, they will be provided, along with water and snacks. Questions? Get in touch with us through our Contact page. 

Give Bees a Chance

Did you know that there are more than 200 native bee species in Connecticut? Bees are experiencing challenges and you can help by documenting the ones you observe where you live.  HLCT Board Member Tracy Zarillo is an Entomologist with the CT Agricultural Experiment Station, and recommends the crowdsourced species identification website iNaturalist, which serves as an occurrence recording tool for living organisms. Using an app on your phone, you can upload your photos of living things, and experts will help identify them. More than 1,500 Connecticut residents have already contributed observations of bees, and perhaps you are one of them. If not, consider giving it a try and contribute to the biodiversity data about the bees that live in our yards, gardens, and neighborhoods. Photo by Tracy Zarillo of a female unequal cellophane bee, Colletes inaequalis.

Six Lakes

Your land trust is working as part of a group interested in making the 102-acre parcel known as Six Lakes or "Powder Farm" available for public access. The Hamden Land Conservation Trust along with the Connecticut Land Conservation Council are working as part of the Six Lakes Park Coalition and the Town of Hamden to bring about a vision for remediation of the property (by its owner Olin Corporation) and eventual public access to the site. See Brian Slattery's article in The New Haven Independent about this past summer's town meeting and let town officials know that you support remediation and eventual public access to the property. Find out more at the Six Lakes Coalition website.