On a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon July 12, more than 2,000 people, including many parents with their children, had lots of fun and learned about the importance of pollinators during the Butterfly Festival at the Red Bank Battlefield Park.
Youngsters enjoyed the playground swings and slides, parents shopped at the vendor booths, and many families lined up for a chance to visit the Butterfly House created by the Gloucester County Certified Gardeners (GCCG), which organizes the annual event.
“We have lots of volunteers and have been out here since 8 a.m. to set everything up,” said the organization president, Dan Battisti, who encouraged residents to grow pollinator gardens.
“A Pollinator Pitstop Garden has nectar and host plants for creatures such as butterflies, bees and hummingbirds,” said Battisti as he showed attendees the map of all these gardens in the county.
“We have a lot of bees and butterflies in Gloucester County,” he said, adding that it is an agricultural area with lots of farms, and some of the farmers raise bees to insure pollination of their crops.
“The Gloucester County Certified Gardeners monitor all the gardens in the park. They do a great job. It is a wonderful partnership,” said Jen Janofsky, director of the Red Bank Battlefield Park.
“The park is one of more than a dozen projects we have in the county,” said Battisti, adding that the GCCG has more than 100 volunteer members who help take care of the various gardens.
“We try to get people to understand how to plant a garden for wildlife, bees and butterflies,” said Certified Gardener Heather MacGregor, adding that the all pollinators need nectar plants and butterflies also need host plants to lay their eggs and provide nutrition for the resulting caterpillars.
The host plants are the key to the butterfly life cycle and provide food and shelter for the developing larvae, said MacGregor, who was helping lead the long line of people through the Butterfly House and pointing out the caterpillars growing strong and healthy on the native plants.
They include milkweed, a crucial host plant for Monarch butterflies; dill, fennel and parsley that are hosts for Black Swallowtails; Willows which host Viceroy and Red-spotted Purple butterflies; and the spicebush, which is the host plant for the Spicebush Shallowtails.
“We have more attendees every year,” County Board of Commissioners Director Frank DeMarco while sitting under a tree near the Butterfly House. “People are looking for things to do in the summer.”
“Thanks to Mary Cummings and her staff at the county’s Land Preservation office for all of their help and support,” said Battisti, who along with Certified Gardeners Lisa Neimeister and Quinn Thomas (dressed as a butterfly) were encouraging people to join the Pollinator Pitstop crew and purchase the pollinator plants on display at their booth.
They included cornflowers, milkweed, coreopsis, parsley, full size zinnias, lobelia, sage, salvia, black eyed susan, butterfly week and Lil Joe Pye weed.
“Our goal is to connect private and public gardens in Gloucester County as pollinator friendly spaces. A Pollinator Pitstop is a garden which provides a habitat and nutrition for pollinators, uses non-toxic products, and has at least one native plant species,” Battisti said.
Guidelines include finding a spot that ideally gets six-plus hours of sun, water the plants to keep them moist for the first two weeks and then as needed, and be patient.
“A garden may take a few years to fully establish,” said Battisti, adding that the Butterfly Festival is one of two being events that the GCCG program puts on each year.
The other one is the annual Plant Sale the Saturday before Mother’s Day at Scotland Run Park.
“We grow 3,000 plants in the county greenhouses and we sell out every year. This year the 450 heirloom tomatoes sold out in less than an hour,” he said.
Certified Gardeners are trained volunteers who assist Gloucester County in delivering horticulture programs and information to the general public, he said. They must volunteer 60 hours, working in their communities in programs sponsored by the Office of Land Preservation.
The GCCG members at the Butterfly Festival made sure everyone had a good time and helped education the public about growing for nectar and host plants for the pollinators who keep crops growing. For information go to gardener@co.gloucester.nj.us.
