POTS & PLANTS
/CHARLOTTE’S BUTTERFLYWAY GARDEN
by Beth Lopez
(click images to enlarge. Links to all websites cited here are listed at the end of this column)
In the final week of June, residents, neighbours and friends came together to celebrate and dedicate Charlotte’s Butterflyway Garden at Haro Park Centre.
Charlotte Tarver enjoying a sunny moment in her butterflyway garden (James Oakes Photo)
Charlotte Tarver, a resident at Haro Park Centre, says she’s been a gardener for 70 years. She had a big backyard garden on Haida Gwaii, where she lived for 30 years. Today she is still a gardener at heart. I did ask my question about how she developed a love of gardening. Charlotte had her first experience as a gardener as a 12-year-old, but not with the encouragement of an adult. She and a friend planted some radish seeds to see what would happen and that curiosity has continued throughout her life.
She learned of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflyway Project and was immediately interested. British Columbia has 187 species of butterflies, the most diverse population in all of Canada. However, pollinators are under attack from loss of habitat as forests are cut down or burned. They are also sensitive to chemicals and pesticides used widely in agriculture.
Founded in 2017, The Butterflyway Project works to create gardens of native plants across Canada to provide safe havens to butterflies as they migrate. On their website is an interactive map that charts the existing gardens from B.C. to the Maritimes. They recruit and train Butterfly Rangers early in the year and those volunteers then go out and create environments full of plants that pollinators need, free from pesticides and chemicals.
The common Yarrow, or more formally achillea millefolium. (James Oakes Photo)
Charlotte worked and studied to become a Butterflyway Ranger. She admits that she hates Zoom, but said she enjoyed the Zoom workshops needed to become a Ranger, sitting through hour-long lessons, taking notes and learning. She learned leadership skills and became an advocate for the diversity, beauty and usefulness of butterflies and other pollinators.
Charlotte also learned about the city’s Green Streets initiative and saw a way to bring these two opportunities together.
The boulevard along the Haro street side of the Haro Park Centre building was there to be used. Charlotte created the plans for a butterflyway garden along the boulevard, and with the help of many volunteers, the plan became reality. Much of the work and many of the plants went in during the summer of 2022, but planting was going on right up until the day before the dedication.
Through her training, Charlotte learned about plants native to B.C. that support pollinators with their nectar and those that act as a host for eggs, including the swamp milkweed plants with their deep purple flowers needed by Monarch butterflies. There are yarrow plants, bright yellow and white varieties. There are the black hawthorn trees with thorns that Indigenous people used as needles and fish hooks. The trees have beautiful flowers and small fruits loved by pollinators.
Up and down the garden you will see many small wild strawberry plants. A couple of the plants had flowers and one down on the end had a few ripe berries. With Charlotte’s permission, I picked two of the tiny red berries and we both tasted and appreciated the intense flavour.
Charlotte addresses the crowd that turned out for the butterflyway dedication. (James Oakes Photo)
There are thimbleberries in the garden, and Charlotte also found a native huckleberry plant. She said that on Haida Gwaii, her back yard was full of huckleberries, which make a very nice jelly. Most of these fruits are also loved by the birds.
Charlotte has planned the garden to have a succession of flowers and fruits over the course of the summer. From early spring to late autumn, there will be something in bloom once the plants are all firmly established.
She sourced the plants, with difficulty, and with help from friends they were brought to the garden. Neighbours pitched in moving soil, planting the native plants, setting paving stones and installing a bird bath. Even the building manager from the next door building joined and added a garden of her own to the boulevard, extending it to cover much of the block.
Support from the administration and staff at Haro Park Center helped make the dream come true. With their financial support the garden grew. The staff also made the celebration happen by printing up signage and posters, setting up the displays, finding chairs for visitors and providing coffee and cookies to the assembled crowd.
A dumptruck adds a load of topsoil to the garden. (James Oakes Photo)
Rod Gillis, the CEO of Haro Park Centre, spoke at the celebration. He said that he chose to work with seniors because he finds them inspiring. Charlotte is an inspiration and has inspired many to give, to work and to enjoy the beauty of the natural world. In my short time with Charlotte, I agree that she is an inspiration. Despite physical challenges, Charlotte found her passion and inspired many others to work hard with her to see that dream fulfilled.
There is one important final step to the process though. Once we have butterflyway gardens, how do we know that they are making a difference? How do we know that all our hard work is actually doing any good? That is where the Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflies In My Back Yard (BIMBY) comes in.
Charlotte tending the garden. (James Oakes Photo)
Early in the year, the project recruits Seekers who are trained via webinar. They will look for and record sightings of butterflies, noting when and where they were seen and what type of plant they were visiting. All sightings are reported to BIMBY. By collecting and mapping the information scientists get a better idea of where the butterflies are travelling and whether their numbers are growing or shrinking. Many of the Seekers are also Butterflyway Rangers, but that’s not a prerequisite.
With data collected, time will tell whether the Butterflyway Project has helped increase the pollinator population. Hopefully so, for the sake of the plants — these insects are such an important part of the cycle.
But we don’t need research to show that the garden along Haro has given us beauty. It has also given so many people a sense of purpose, the feeling that in their way, they are doing good for the neighbourhood and for the country. For many, I believe, there is also the joy that comes from helping a friend achieve a dream.
