BALDWINSVILLE — One night, Cindy Clarke took a stroll around Lysander Park, located on Smokey Hollow Road.
“This was a jewel I hadn’t been to except for parties,” Clarke recalled.
She was struck by the park’s beauty, especially the mile-long walking path through the woods and the life-size checkerboard, the latter of which was a 2019 Eagle Scout project for Kyle Rogers of Troop 80.
Near the path was a sign for a butterfly garden. But something was missing, Clarke thought.
“I walked around it and I said, ‘Well, where’s the butterfly plant?’ It needed more color,” she said.
Clarke approached the town of Lysander and asked if she could spruce up the butterfly garden. According to Joy Swensen of the Women’s Garden Club of Baldwinsville, Clarke has planted eight rose of Sharon bushes and a few butterfly bushes.
Now, Clarke is asking local gardeners who are dividing their perennials and doing some spring cleaning if they have any plants they would like to donate to the butterfly garden. She is looking for native perennials. Swensen said small trees, bushes and ground cover are welcome as well.
The North American Butterfly Association offers tips for planting a successful butterfly garden.
“You will need to choose plants that fall into two groups: nectar plants that will provide adult butterflies with energy and caterpillar food plants that will feed caterpillars. With careful selection from these two groups, your garden will provide for the entire life cycle of butterflies,” reads the NABA Butterfly Garden and Habitat Program website, nababutterfly.com.
According to NABA, suitable native plants that provide nectar for butterfly gardens in Upstate New York include:
- Sparkling dewberry (Rubus flagellaris)
- Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca, also a good food source for caterpillars)
- Bee balm (Monarda)
- Grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia)
- New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)
- Crooked-stem aster (Symphyotrichum prenanthoides)
Native plants that feed caterpillars include:
- Trees such as black cherry, common hackberry, elm and willow
- Pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea)
- Turtlehead (Chelone glabra)
- Wild lupine (Lupinus perennis)
“I have my own gardens here that I love,” Clarke said. “The garden club got me involved more with ideas and the perennial sale.”
The Women’s Garden Club will hold its annual perennial sale from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 29, next to Tops Market on Downer Street in Baldwinsville.
If you have native perennials you would like to donate to the Lysander Park butterfly garden, contact Cindy Clarke at [email protected].
