Garden Club: March 2021

GARDEN CLUB
Niguel Shores Garden Club met
on February 15. Our own Tom O’Keefe presented an informative talk on Monarch Butterflies and their favorite plant, milkweed.
Tom’s interest in Monarchs goes back to the 1970s when he remembers the hillsides of this area alive with fluttering Monarchs and the native California milkweed plants that sus- tained them. Since then, the Monarchs have seriously declined and are being considered an Endangered Species. Decreasing habitat, pesticides, and the introduction of non-native species of milkweed have been blamed. Tom showed us the common Tropical Milkweed plant which is widely available in our nurs- eries and very attractive to Monarchs. However, botanists attri- bute a harmful protozoa in the leaves of this plant (ingested by Monarch caterpillars) to a debilitating disease in the adult butterflies. Therefore, planting tropical milkweed is not recom- mended unless you cut it back to the ground in the winter to kill the harmful protozoa. Gardeners can do our part by plant- ing native California Narrow-leaf Milkweed (Asclepias fasicularis) and many nectar plants (such as Lantana) for Monarchs to lay their eggs on and feed.
Native Narrow-leaf Milkweed plants are available in nurseries in March and April and can also be planted from seed now. Tom discussed the butterfly life cycle and said that our local Monarchs are not the ones who do the big migrations to winter in Mexico, but they do move around regionally. The Garden Club will be planting native California milkweed and some nectar plants in the elevated planters near the Com- munity Center Playground, hopefully to attract and sustain the Monarchs and to serve as an educational marker for our community. Tom finished with a surprise gift to each of us— an envelope of native Milkweed seed! We enjoyed a snack, exchanging news, picking out something from our horticul- ture table, and the camaraderie of our Garden Club friends and guests! Join us on March 15 for a special presentation by Al Glatt, Chris Daley, and Karl Kuhn on Bluebirds and
how to attract them to your garden.
—Nadine Allen