It’s that time of year to get outside and enjoy the beautiful spring weather. For those of us who love to garden the season has already frantically begun. So much to do and so little time!!! For our local butterfly expert, Deb Cady – Master Gardener and a Director of The Butterfly Society of Virginia, it means the start of butterfly season. Deb raises many varieties of butterflies and releases them in various gardens around town including her own in north Suffolk, where she has transformed her garden into a butterfly haven. This year however, there is a new location she plans to release and establish a thriving butterfly community and that’s the new Butterfly Garden at Bennett’s Creek Park. Deb and a small team of Suffolk Master Gardeners teamed up with Keep Suffolk Beautiful and Suffolk Parks and Recreation to install a small butterfly garden next to the children’s playground and they plan to open it for Earth Day on April 23rd at 11am. Deb is leading the installation of the garden which started on April 11th and will be completed the following week. Deb says, “There will be 70 plants for butterflies to enjoy and we hope that when people see the garden in bloom they will be inspired to plant their own host plants in their own yards and help to increase butterfly populations in the area.” Last year Deb reared more than 1,000 butterflies and about 500 were Monarchs. The Monarchs are a butterfly species suffering from massive population decrease due to loss of habitat and are a conservation priority for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Deb and Keep Suffolk Beautiful are inviting people of all ages to come out and see the garden in its infancy and learn about the wonderful world of butterflies. Suffolk Public Libraries and the Suffolk Art Gallery will be joining us to celebrate the garden and Earth Day with story-time, arts and crafts and an amazing face painter. We also have free tickets to give away to the Virginia Beach Aquarium, the Virginia Zoo and the Virginia Living Museum. The opening is from 11am to 1pm on April 23rd at Bennetts Creek Park. Please come out and have an enjoyable two hours in the park for Earth Day.
Blog post contributed by Wayne Jones, Litter Control Coordinator with the City of Suffolk.