A home gardener was delighted to encounter a monarch butterfly right in their own backyard — but that was just the beginning.
They shared a photo of the majestic butterfly to Dayton’s subreddit, along with the good news.
“Watched this beauty lay about 3 dozen eggs on all my milkweed,” they wrote.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Commenters were excited to see the beautiful butterfly.
“We stan a queen,” one joked.
Monarchs are one of the most recognizable butterfly species in the U.S., known both for their striking orange, black, and white coloring as well as for their dramatic annual migratory flocks. Each year, monarchs fly south and west for winter, much like birds do. And along the way, they stop and rest in local gardens, like this one in Ohio.
That’s where monarch-friendly gardening comes into play. Monarch caterpillars have a single food source — milkweed — and without available milkweed plants, adult butterflies have nowhere to lay their eggs.
The Dayton gardener, therefore, received due congratulations for their pollinator-friendly gardening choice.
“Yay! Props for planting milkweed,” one person said.
“You are hosting royalty,” another enthused. “Congratulations!”
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As the Monarch Joint Venture explained, planting milkweed has benefits that extend beyond just helping monarchs.
As a flagship conservation species, “monarchs are well-known and very likeable, so people are more likely to get involved in working to protect them,” the website shared. “By promoting habitat restoration for monarchs, other pollinators and wildlife species are also benefiting. Milkweed is a great nectar source for pollinators and provides habitat and plant diversity in a number of different landscapes.”
If you’re looking to rewild your landscaping with native or non-invasive plants, milkweed could be a great way to start, in addition to other local native species.
Not only does opting for a native-forward landscape support important pollinators, but a rewilded yard is much cheaper and easier to maintain than a monocultured grass landscape — making it a win-win for gardeners, monarchs, and other pollinators all at once.
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