Following the Butterfly: Children's Eye View of a Pollinator Garden

According to my four-year-old daughter, Naomi, a butterfly wakes beneath a leaf and stretches all four wings. Then it flies to the monarda for breakfast, where it drinks as much flower juice as it wants.

This summer, that was easy to imagine. Not long after our monarda bloomed, it was covered with butterflies. We had planted it hoping they would come, but I was still surprised by how quickly they arrived and how many there were. The children and I stood watching them move from flower to flower, as though we had opened a restaurant and suddenly found every table full.

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. A caterpillar sitting on a leaf resting on a persons fingers.

When I first learned about the Cheshire County Conservation District’s Conservation Opportunity Fund, I was excited. I had wanted to plant more food and habitat for pollinators, but the grant gave us the ability to really begin. Soon I was making plant lists, asking questions, and talking about pollinators with anyone who showed the slightest willingness to listen.

That became one of my favorite parts of the project. Neighbors told me what they loved in their yards and what they had noticed while visiting. Other gardeners shared recommendations and experience. Each conversation led to another plant or another question. Before we planted anything at all, the garden was already growing through these exchanges.

It’s much like Naomi’s butterfly. Having finished breakfast, it does not stay in one place. It sets off to visit its friends and neighbors, flying over the stone wall, across the road, and into the neighbors’ gardens. A butterfly has no reason to recognize a property line. It may begin its morning in our monarda, find lunch in someone's pepperbush, and settle beneath someone else’s lilac leaf at night.

The garden connected with each of my children differently. My middle child, Erwyn, was immediately interested in the bugs. While I was thinking about the overall garden or wondering whether a plant would survive, Erwyn was closer to the ground, wanting to know what was crawling, landing, hiding, or eating. The garden was not an arrangement of plants to them - it was a place full of small, dramatic lives.

Sylvia could mostly have taken or left the bugs. Her interest depended on whether a flower was pretty enough to wear in her hair. At first that seemed less connected to the purpose of a pollinator garden, but I began to see that it was simply another way of entering it. Erwyn came through curiosity, Naomi through imagination, and Sylvia through beauty.

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. A child holding a giant sunflower and smiling down at it.

That has mattered to me. We often talk about teaching children to care for the earth as though there is one correct way for that care to look. But one child wants to inspect a beetle, and another invents the story around the private life of a butterfly, while another yet notices the color and shape of a flower and wants to carry that beauty with her. Our garden had room for all three.

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. A child harvesting potatoes from the ground.

This year we planted blueberries together and talked about how their blossoms would feed pollinators before the berries fed birds and people. The bushes were small, but the children could already imagine the fruit. If you ask, Naomi’s butterfly made regular visits to check on them, while Erwyn looked for whatever might be living beneath their leaves. Sylvia was willing to reserve judgment until the blossoms appeared.

There is something wonderful about planting a perennial with a child. Both are small now, but you cannot help imagining the plant and the person they will become. Neither can be hurried very much. You offer care, room, and time, while much of the important work happens where you cannot see it.

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. Two children planting a perennial.

Some plants made us wait, but the monarda did not, and neither did the sweet pepperbush. The number of bees drawn to the pepperbush was astonishing. Once we stopped to look, “a lot of bees” became tiny bees, round bumblebees, quick honeybees, and slow mason bees. Some stayed only a moment, while others carefully worked their way around the blossoms. Erwyn noticed the differences. Naomi folded the bees into the neighborhood of her butterfly story. Sylvia looked for the flowers she liked best, whichever smelled the strongest in this case. 

The garden has changed the way we pay attention. I want my children to care about the earth, but I don’t think that happens because I tell them they should. It happens through familiarity. A pawpaw tree becomes the tree they helped put into the ground. An echinacea becomes the flower they watered, inspected, or tucked behind an ear. The monarda becomes the place where Naomi’s butterfly goes for breakfast.

The children can see that their attention and care have an effect here and see how that ripples into the wider world. Their hands can help make a place where another living thing finds food and shelter. At the same time, the butterfly reminds us that we cannot provide everything in one garden. It needs our neighbors too. It needs the small gardens, wild edges, flowering shrubs, and safe resting places scattered throughout the places where we live. Our individual pieces of land are joined by the creatures that travel between them. A neighbor’s flowers may feed a butterfly that began its morning in our garden. Something we plant may support the bees that pollinate someone else’s vegetables. The children may not use words like “habitat corridor,” but they can follow a butterfly’s flight and understand that the living world does not stop at our property line.

In Naomi’s telling, the butterfly spends the last part of the afternoon dancing in the air. Perhaps it pauses while Erwyn watches it, avoids the flower Sylvia has chosen for her flower chain, and then flies over the stone wall to see what is blooming next door. When evening comes, it finds a safe leaf, folds all four wings, and goes to sleep.

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. A child with flowers in her hair.

No doubt, in the morning, it will stretch its wings and begin again. And, in their own different ways, so will the children here, hopefully, with a deeper sense of care for the natural world around us. 

Image Credit: Sadie Greene-Sims. A small pollinator garden.

The mission of the Conservation Opportunity Fund is to provide funding for owners of small tracts of land who are interested in improving the wildlife habitat on their property. This program is an annual opportunity to support environmental stewardship and the ecological integrity of Cheshire County, NH. Learn more, here!