Designing and planting gardens for butterfly habitat is my passion project. I have certainly challenged myself by living in homes in three different continents over the last decade. But now that I’m back home in Virginia, I’ve rededicated myself to recreating my previous garden habitat, long destroyed by tenant neglect and aggressive invasives encroaching from all sides.
Almost one year in, I’m finding that establishing a garden is more difficult and more expensive than it was a decade ago. The native plant craze has taken off, which I’m grateful for, but the price of high quality native plant material has skyrocketed. Luckily I have friends and neighbors who I helped in the past and they are now helping me. In exchange for hard labor in their gardens, I get the cast-off progeny from their successful habitats. I’ll take anything, from violets to ironweed, as long as it’s native, and especially if it’s a butterfly host plant.
One of the unexpected challenges to establishing my garden, and it’s far from being lush so far, is the changing climate. The rain storms bring more rain in shorter times than in the past, leading to erosion and lost seedlings. The droughts are hotter and dryer, and last longer than I ever remember. I have to water seedlings, transplants and trees more often than ever before, just to keep them from expiring from one day to the next. This was surprising to me, because one of the main reasons I was originally drawn to native plants was their resilience to local soil and weather conditions. Now plants need more care, mulch and water.
The biggest disappointment to me this time around has been the lack of butterflies specifically, and bugs and birds generally. I was slightly encouraged this month by assisting in the local annual butterfly count. The organizers know the best locations to find butterflies and we did see quite a few. This experience bolstered my enthusiasm and focused my efforts to support our local butterflies by providing the plants and conditions they need.
Just yesterday, I took a video inventory of my wildlife garden strip along the side of my property. Several of the perennials are in bloom, and I wanted to capture them before the approaching Tropical Storm Ophelia arrived, promising 50 straight hours of rainfall. While we need the water, I just wish it would arrive in more manageable quantity and frequency. My county is shifting how they will charge residents for storm water management, creating a new Stormwater Utility. Each household’s rate is determined by the ratio of hardscape to permeable surface, as determined by satellite image. Residents can apply for credits by doing certain stormwater retention practices, one of which is creating wildlife habitat. This is the reason I’m documenting the garden. Hopefully I can get a discount, but my overarching motivation is to support the butterflies, pollinators, birds, chipmunks, spiders, voles, and other things I don’t even know about (flying squirrels, I hope?). Life depends on it.
So, in my yard this year I’ve seen one Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly in my wild cherry tree, and one Monarch on a potted Lantana that I was babysitting for my neighbor while she was on vacation. That’s it. That’s all. Birds I have many, but mostly because I’ve hung a bird feeder under the oak tree, and added two bird baths. Today, even during the windy downpour, I’ve spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, cardinals, doves, housefinches, sparrows, chickadees and titmice. But honestly, during the two months I refused to fill the feeder, to let the groundcover recover, the birds were nowhere to be found. I hope that by diligently restoring my backyard wildlife habitat, the birds will return because of the nuts, berries, seeds, caterpillars, spiders and cover that they need, not for the junk food they crave.
In scant one year, I’ve managed to purchase, adopt and start from seed at least a few of each of these native plants:
New York Ironweed, Blue Lobelia, Lungwort, Cardinal Flower, St. John’s Wort, Blue-eyed Grass, Sensitive Fern, Ostrich Fern, Golden Ragwort, Elephant’s Foot, Foxglove Beardtongue, Virginia Strawberry, Bluestem Goldenrod, White Wood Aster, Geum, Wild Ginger, Wild Petunia, Virginia Creeper, Dwarf Crested Iris, Common Milkweed, Obedient Plant, Witch Hazel, Elderberry Mountain Laurel, Joe-Pye Weed, Boneset, Pawpaw, Bee Balm and Purple Coneflower. Still surviving from my old garden are Sweetbay Magnolia, Mapleleaf Virburnum, Winterberry Holly, Inkberry Holly, Silky Dogwood, River Birch and Burr Oak. It’s an impressive list in writing, but when I look out my window, it looks pretty bare. I know it will take another year or two to get established. I’m just impatient.
