Club, CDD partner in butterfly garden project

LAKEWOOD RANCH — Carolyn Nation, Mary Auger and Norma Kisida stand opposite one another, pulling a measuring tape across yards of wildly growing plants at Summerfield Park.

And at the two 180-square-foot spaces they measured, the Gardeners Out East Garden Club members will replant a long-unattended butterfly garden.

“It’s been a butterfly garden before, but it needs some TLC,” said Nation, the club’s president. “That’s what we’re going to give it.”

“It’s just kind of a fit (for our club),” she said. “This will be an ongoing project. We’ve already been offered donations of trellises and other items.”

Lakewood Ranch Community Development District 1 supervisors, who oversee the park, signed off on the concept at their November meeting. Lakewood Ranch’s operations staff will prepare the flower bed, located roughly between the Summerfield Park Pavilion and the Lakewood Ranch Information Center, and provide mulch and a watering system. The CDD will share in half the cost for plant materials, which will total about $1,000. Club members will pay for the remainder of the plants and provide the labor to install it.

Garden Club members are wringing their hands in excitement as they select plants, design the garden’s layout and make other preparations.

The group plans to create the new garden by March 15.

Kisida, a master gardener, has personal experience with butterfly gardens and even teaches about them. She helps maintain the master gardeners’ garden at Tillman Elementary, as well.

She said the garden will contain as many native and Florida-friendly plants as possible and will have a variety of both nectar plants, from which butterflies drink nectar, and host plants, which caterpillars consume. The group will lean on the advice of Florida Native Plants, a nursery, for plant suggestions.

“We want it to be as pretty as we can make it, but also functional,” said Nation, adding club members Eileen Amesbury and Brenda Morris also have been participating in the planning process. “We’re wanting to get the butterfly through its life cycle. We hope children can visit it.”

The Gardeners Out East Garden Club meets 1 p.m. the first Monday of the month at Northern Trust, 6320 Venture Drive, Lakewood Ranch. For information, contact Nation at 361-1047.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].