Mission Monarch: Project Milkweed

My friend M. picked up this milkweed plant for me at Norfolk Botanical Garden's annual plant sale last week. It doesn't look like much now, but in a few weeks, (hopefully) it will be a blaze of tiny, fluted orange flowers.

Milkweed was the signature plant of NBG's plant sale this year, for the simple reason that it's the most important plant in the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Milkweed provides nectar for adult monarchs and is the only food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars. But because of loss of habitat, milkweed is disappearing at an alarming rate. And so are the monarchs.

Enter Project Milkweed, which encourages people to plant this simple, flowering shrub to help rebuild that habitat and thus rebuild butterfly populations. Over the course of the summer, NBG is going to host several events on the monarch butterfly, and on how to plant and care for milkweed (click here to find upcoming butterfly-themed events).

Anouk and I are still deciding where to plant our milkweed, but we're already looking forward to seeing butterflies around our yard this year. If you're interested in planting some milkweed in your own garden, you can contact NBG or check with the Butterfly Society of Virginia to find out where to find it. Besides orange, it comes in white and purple too -- I think it would be beautiful to have a huge patch of all the colors intermingled.

Do you have many monarchs in your neck of the woods?