It takes a community working together to keep nature healthy and safe in our urban environments.
The David Suzuki Foundation is currently looking for volunteers in Richmond and four other cites in Canada to become Butterflyway Rangers, to help create more butterfly-friendly neighbourhoods.
A Butterflyway is described as a highway for pollinators such as butterflies, bees and other beneficial bugs. Imagine growing gardens that will encourage, rather than discourage, bugs to eat your plants.
Because habitat loss has caused a population decline in butterfly species in B. C., the goal of the Butterflyway Project is to provide food and shelter for pollinators by creating a network of wildflower gardens, big and small, through neighbourhoods across the province.
We gardeners often think of ways to attract pollinators, such as butterflies, to our flowers and plants that provide nectar, while helping with our food production. What Butterflyway does is encourage the planting of host plants where butterflies will lay their eggs and their caterpillars will eat the plants.
The David Suzuki Foundation is recruiting Butterflyway Rangers for this project until March 20. Training will be provided in April at different locations throughout Richmond. Richmond Butterflyway Rangers will then be sent back into their neighbourhoods with a mission to plant native wildflowers and shrubs in backyards, front yards, local schools, parks — guerrilla gardening at its best.
Once the Butterflyway Ranger has planted at least a dozen host plantings, the David Suzuki Foundation will give formal recognition to that Ranger on the Suzuki Foundation website and the Ranger’s patches of gardens will be plotted on the national Butterflyway Project Map. The Foundation has already done this in Toronto, so there is a map showing the host plants there.
Applications are available now at Butterflyway.DavidSuzuki.org. I know I will be applying to become the Butterflyway Ranger.
Lynda Pasacreta is the current president of the Richmond Garden Club. For more information visit RichmondGardenClub.ca
