Native plants in our gardens are starting to make a difference for Monarch butterflies. What we do in our gardens makes a difference!
Monarch on liatrus_9_17I am seeing fewer and fewer Monarch butterflies in my native garden now that fall is coming. This is good, because they should be headed down to Mexico where they winter. But with the warm weather a few are lingering. They are no longer interested in the milkweed which has gone to seed. Instead they are all over the liatrus.
These amazing butterflies migrate each year from Canada to Mexico. Their population is measured by the number of acres of forest they cover in Mexico during the winter. They covered 45 acres of forest at their peak 20 years ago, but were down to only about three acres just a couple of years about. That is a 93 percent decline. Last year they increased to ten acres as gardeners, farmers, and communities added milkweed.
What we do is helping, and hopefully that will galvanize gardeners to work harder to support our native birds and insects that are struggling from climate change and development by planting native plants and not using pesticides.