The Otter Valley Naturalists, a local club focused on nature education and conservation, have planted native gardens around the area, giving residents a chance to learn about local pollinators.
A native garden outside the Straffordville Library has been in place for three years.
On Friday, June 12, Otter Valley Naturalist Ruth Bice had a booth set up outside the library. She handed out garden handbooks, offered activities and shared advice on how to care for a native garden.
One activity was “find my caterpillar,” where participants had to match the caterpillar to which butterfly it would metamorphosize into with a clue. The clue usually had to do with the caterpillars’ favourite food.
The activities were focused on caterpillars, and Ms. Bice plans to host more native garden information days this year, hoping to focus on other pollinators such as butterflies, bees and birds.
Some gardens, including the one at the Straffordville Library, have a watering station, which could be as simple as a plate with water and rocks for insects to land on.
Ms. Bice said it keeps them hydrated by giving them a spot to land, and adding mud can provide the salts some male butterflies need.
The garden holds a wide variety of plants, including swamp milkweed, common sneezeweed, spotted joe-pye weed, pearly everlasting, white heath aster, wild lupine, butterfly weed, flat-top goldenrod and more.
Wild lupine is important to the native garden, as it is one of the only plants eaten by the endangered Karner blue butterfly’s caterpillars.
Ms. Bice noted some of the golden-rod creeping into a new spot.
“Thats the great thing about plants, if they’re unhappy they’ll move,” she said.
She said the garden is very low-maintenance, with the main difficultly arising when the weather is very dry.
Otter Valley Naturalist Dale Avey also mentioned a community garden in Port Burwell at Trinity Anglican Church. The vegetable garden is used and cared for by the community.
He said the two gardens have a symbiotic relationship. Straffordville’s native garden feeds and attracts pollinators, while the pollinators can also help pollinate Port Burwell’s community garden.
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