The Monarch Butterfly, according to National Geographic, is one of the most recognizable and well-studied butterflies on the planet. They have attractive orange wings laced with black lines bordered with white dots and migrate seasonally. Millions of them used to be seen all around California during winter when they migrated southward from the northern United States and Canada.
In recent years, however, the number of monarch butterflies has been declining steeply. But you can invite them back into your garden by planting the right kind of native plants and using the correct gardening techniques.
This is what the Altadena Public Library is teaching with “Seed Library: Inviting Monarch Butterflies into the Garden with Native Plants,” online classes that start on Saturday, March 6, and continue monthly, every first Saturday of the month, through June 30, 2022.
Barbara Eisenstein, author of the newly published “Wild Suburbia – Learning to Garden with Native Plants,” will be handling the class on Zoom from 10 to 11 a.m.
Eisenstein started the community volunteer group Friends of South Pasadena Nature Park, which she continues to lead. She is on the Board of Directors of the San Gabriel Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and continues to garden, give talks, and write her blog, “Weeding Wild Suburbia,” at www.weedingwildsuburbia.com.
Eisenstein is a Research Associate at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.
To register for the Zoom event, visit http://bit.ly/37a8oX2.
For more information, call (626) 798-0833 or visit www.altadenalibrary.org.
