Butterfly
Garden Project at Audubon Naturalist Society's Woodend Nature Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland
With
lots of help and advice from Marney Bruce, Stephanie Mason, Steve Dryden, and the Single Volunteers of DC, I put in a
butterfly garden at Woodend in October 2003. The area for the garden is next
to a driveway, and it was overrun with invasive nonnative plants including wisteria, porcelain berry, multiflora rose, wineberry,
ground ivy, burdock, wild strawberry, and garlic mustard. There were very few
native plants there.
The
first project was to clear the site. Because the plot was small, I was able to
prepare the soil manually. No herbicides were used. Chunks of asphalt from the driveway were removed.
Next,
we had to decide which plants to introduce into this garden. The plants had to
be deer resistant, native to the area, and attractive to butterflies. Next to
the driveway, we planted low-growing plants like mistflower, butterfly weed, and daisy fleabane. Behind them, we planted taller plants such as wild bergamot, false nettles, and dogbane. In the back, we planted even taller plants such as late-flowering boneset, tall goldenrod, and joe pye
weed. I hope at some point to add New York ironweed, wingstem, common milkweed,
and swamp milkweed. In my garden these are all deer-resistant, and mistflower
and late-flowering boneset are the top two attractors to butterflies. The joe
pye weed turned out to not be deer resistant in this garden, however.
The
first winter, I had to protect the garden from vehicles. Apparently, people saw
an area cleared of plants as a place to park. So, I put up a few steel fence
posts and stumps next to the driveway. In the summer there was some deer damage,
but they left most everything alone except for the joe pye weed. Many of the
invasive plants returned. I weeded the garden about once a week in the summer
to keep out them out. We also decided to remove some native nonbutterfly plants
such as poke weed.
By
early fall, the late-flowering boneset and mistflower had established themselves and took over most site. Over time, I expect that other plants will crowd out the boneset and mistflower.
