By Victoria DePalma
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| Victoria DePalma |
Shortly after I moved into Whitney Center I was told that
the Hamden Land Conservation Trust wanted to plant a butterfly garden on our
property. The man in charge of the Trust was Jim Sirch whom I had known for
many years at the Education Department of Peabody Museum. He told me he was
about to become president of the Trust in the late spring. About the same time
I became chairwoman of Whitney Center’s landscape and garden committee. We
settled on a garden spot at the south end of our garage and, in due time, the
project was OK’d by all concerned.
In late summer 2012, Jim’s group dug up the garden area, removed
grass and weeds and added topsoil. Then they arrived a week later with several
dozen plants that had been donated by local nurseries. My committee members did
the planting. Everything was growing very well into the late fall until Whitney
Center’s hired landscape company arrived and unfortunately cut all the plants almost to the ground. I was very
upset but there was nothing I could do. During the winter we had 40 inches of
snow and the plows piled the snow on top of our garden—that may have saved our plants from freezing to death because in
spring everything came up and flourished (including the weeds)! Now, in summer,
they are all blooming. But it is now late July and not a butterfly has arrived.
Monarch butterflies should be here by now as they usually arrive from their
Mexican breeding grounds in late June or early July. We know that the Mexicans
have been treating the forest from which they migrate with deadly herbicides
so we may be losing the thousands of monarchs we have enjoyed for generations.
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