TAYLOR JAMES
Citizen Staff
The KCI Rotary Club’s efforts to create a butterfly garden in Michael Gunn Park at Platte Meadows continue.
The Rotary has been working on the garden for the past year and a half. They were awarded a $2,500 grant from Rotary International that allowed the local group to purchase seeds for 30 different varieties of plants and benches.
The Platte County Parks Department paved a central area for the butterfly garden. Gary Warner, grant manager of the KCI Rotary Club, said he appreciates the efforts of the groups helping the rotary club with the garden. Warner said the seeds have emerged and plants have begun to sprout. He also said moving forward they’ll have to kill Johnson Grass by spraying it. The Johnson Grass at the park is currently about a foot tall. After the grass is killed, it will be mowed over which will make it easier for the plants to grow.
Warner said rotary clubs in northeastern Iowa were involved with creating butterfly gardens and they encouraged other rotary clubs to make their own. Monarch butterflies are close to becoming an endangered species because there are not enough areas in the United States for them to reproduce. The development of cities is destroying the natural habitat of the monarch butterfly.
Monarch butterflies migrate from Mexico to Canada. The butterflies stop in the Midwest during the summer months as part of their migration journey to reproduce so their next generation can go south. The reproduction cycle spans across multiple generations and the butterflies may stop in the Midwest to lay their eggs. The butterflies reach Mexico by the winter and in the summer they end up in Canada.
Warner said he finds the monarch butterfly’s migration cycle interesting. There are milkweed plants at the park to attract the monarch butterfly. Milkweed is the only source of food for a monarch butterfly caterpillar. Warner said he just submitted another grant to Rotary International and one of the last stages of the butterfly garden is to display signage.
The group is hoping to place a large three sided sign that tells the whole story about the monarch butterflies. Part of the group’s effort is to not only help preserve monarch butterflies, but also inform the public about why the group thinks the butterfly is important.