I thought it fitting to do my first blog post on an update on our front flower beds that we put in last summer.
In May of last year I wrote the following on my Instagram, “What started out as just an interest in Monarch butterflies has suddenly cascaded into a fascination of all Lepidoptera and natives. It’s been a complete paradigm shift and honestly a bit overwhelming and slightly depressing. More on that later. I’ve been gardening for over a decade, thinking I was doing the “right” thing on top of helping others plant and giving advice. It was the right info at the time but now I’m basically starting over and relearning everything I thought I knew. And trying to educate others in the process. For the past several months I’ve been buying up books and researching what I can plant to attract other butterflies/moths and hopefully will have a more diverse ecosystem soon. It’s been hard to find the information. I’ll be sharing my findings and resources along the way.”
Summer of 2021 my husband and I completed our enclosed butterfly enclosure. Formerly a used greenhouse that we placed in the middle of our vegetable garden. Unfortunately, shortly after we got it up and assembled a storm came through and picked it up, twisted it, and shattered most of the panels. My husband was able to bend back all of the pieces but replacing the panels was too cost prohibitive at the time. That’s when I had the idea of framing out the metal with wood and attaching screen to turn it into an enclosure. I had just started getting into the idea of raising monarchs and creating habitat. So we got to work. We sourced the wood at our local Habitat for Humanity resale store and found a roll of screen on clearance at a big box store. And we got it done. I removed some of the pavers that I had laid for the floor inside and planted milkweed plants. We then leave the doors open, wait to see caterpillars and then close the doors to protect them from outside predators and release them once they’ve emerged a monarch.
In learning about how to further help out the monarchs I stumbled into Dr. Douglas Tallamy, an American entomologist, ecologist, conservationist, professor, and author of several books on the urgent issue of habitat loss and its effects, while showing how homeowners can help. If you’re not into reading I highly recommend his presentations on YouTube. Last summer I attended an event in Ohio were I was able to meet Dr. Tallamy and go with a small group on a hike with him as he spoke and educated the group. I wasn’t able to attend this summer unfortunately but am already blocking it off for next summer. He’ll also be coming to our area to speak and I’ll be sharing more on that later!
With all of this new information I decided that I wanted to add new flower beds that were mostly natives but an emphasis on host plants for different butterflies and moths. Outside of our vegetable garden most of the back yard beds are shaded. We’ve put most of our energy into getting the back yard just how we want it and haven’t done much anything out front. This new area is just the first phase. On the other side of our driveway is a spot where we plan to have things be a bit more naturalized and wild. We had done a tour of other properties in our area featuring native plant landscaping and many of them we couldn’t see the bulk majority of people getting behind doing including ourselves. I have an appreciation for them but still wanted to see something more tidy for this space. I have hopes of adding signage and letting it be an open/welcoming space for people to stop by, sit a minute, hopefully learn something they didn’t know, or just see the flowers/wildlife.
Today we got the drone back out to do some one-year progress photos. Yesterday we spent the day weeding and planting and had spotted several species of butterflies. Monarchs, spicebush swallowtail, giant swallowtail, red spotted purple, question mark, and more. I’ve been hoping to see/attract a zebra swallowtail and a pipevine swallowtail. We’ve also noticed a huge increase in dragonflies this year. I’m hoping by next spring I’ll be able to fill the remaining beds with more native plugs and shrubs. We’ve been throwing around the idea of adding a small water feature/pond in the bed where the tree used to be. We’ll see. I do have plans to do a free little library and seed library too. It’s going to take a few years to get established but I think it’s going to be well worth it.
