25 Year Anniversary Butterfly Garden
The Friends of Eastern Neck helped celebrate the 25th anniversary of the always-popular Butterfly Garden with a reception for garden volunteers on Sept. 18 and a large public event on Sept. 19 at the garden itself.
The garden and the surrounding meadows began in 2001 as a BayScape Demonstration area, with funding from a grand from the Chesapeake Bay Trust. That funding paid for plants and materials and cost-shared a stipend for Washington College environmental curriculum intern Mike Scozzafava, who designed and coordinated the project.
At the volunteer reception, Butterfly Garden Manager Secethia Boardley-Davis read a note from Scozzafava, who now works for the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Congratulations to the dedicated volunteers who continue to care for and maintain (the garden),” he wrote. “It’s hard for me to believe that the little garden that I originally designed when I was a college student has sustained and grown for this long. It fills me with pride to read the online feedback from visitors over the years. You have clearly made this garden a destination of note for naturalists on the Eastern Shore.”
At the Saturday event, there were exhibits and activities for younger visitors, including rock-painting and a very popular “Insect Zoo” display from the University of Maryland Entomology Department. Garden visitors were also able to our the gardens, get advice from Kent County master gardeners, and obtain milkweed plantings from the Chestertown Environmental Committee to start their own pollinator areas that attract Monarchs and other butterflies.
Boardley-Davis, who took over as director in 2024, has energized the volunteer group, made important changes in focusing the purpose of the garden, and invited several speakers to give added instruction to the gardeners. The Butterfly Garden, which is always a highlight of a refuge visit, has never looked better.
“We have redone all the pathways, and we are constantly keeping up with making sure each plot is taken care of by the person responsible,” Boardley-Davis said. “Right now we’re starting to clean out one plot and make it into a mini-meadow. We covered that plot for our open house event to show people how to prepare the ground for a mini-meadow and to explain all the benefits. A native meadow supports songbirds and other wildlife, is beneficial to insects, builds healthy soil, and is a low-impact landscape because there is less mowing, less storm water runoff, and it’s also a great supporter of pollinators.”
It’s important work not just for the benefits on the island, but by showing home gardeners what they can also do for the environment. And while the work is important, it is also fun and rewarding for the volunteers.
“I hear many of our gardeners say it is a peaceful, beautiful place to be a part of and to work in,” Boardley-Davis said. “It’s like having heaven on earth.”
The original Demonstration Area was an ambitious project from the start, aimed at displaying a variety of practical and aesthetic alternatives to a lawn-dominated landscape. Land development within the Chesapeake Bay watershed has over the years had devastating effects on Bay ecology, evidenced by the loss of wetlands and the decline in water quality and subaquatic vegetation.
The BayScapes use less water, eliminate chemical treatments, reduce sedimentation, and do not rely or use potentially invasise non-native plants. A total of 553 service hours – put in by volunteers from Outward Bound, the Washington College Into The Streets program, the Delaware Nature Society, local horticulturists, and the FOEN –went into the initial installation.
Over the years, the various aspects of the project have altered and evolved, but volunteer gardeners supported by the Friends of Eastern Neck have remained at the heart of the pollinator garden, better known as the Butterfly Garden.
The garden has had many stewards during its existence, starting with Zeeger DeWilde, a Dutch horticulturist who donated thousands of hours to the NWR System, much of it at Eastern Neck.
Approximately 10 years ago, the original group of volunteers were no longer able to maintain the garden on their own and the Garden Club of Rock Hall, along with other volunteers, stepped up to continue the mission. Recent FOEN coordinators have included Board of Directors presidents Simon Kenyon and Bill Burton, and master gardener Boardley-Davis.
In the United States, more than 150 food crops, including almost all fruit and grain crops, depend on pollinators. The pollinator population has been diminished by pesticides, farming practices, climate change and air pollution, which makes sits like the Butterfly Garden vital for the future.
“The local ecology is what is best for the birds, bees, and butterflies,” said longtime volunteer and master gardener Mary Lou Troy. “They feed the planet. The whole ecology depends on it.”
With dedicated support from the Friends of Eastern Neck, the Butterfly Garden will continue to thrive as it heads into the next 25 years of serving the environment and delighting refuge visitors.
