The meeting will take place at the Franklin Senior Center, 10 Daniel McCahill Street, from 7:00 – 9:00 PM with a social time from 6:30 – 7:00 PM. The meeting is open to the public, including those interested in becoming a club member.
Stephanie Markham, who has established several butterfly gardens, will focus on the importance of butterflies for our environment and how to support them and other pollinators throughout their life cycle in private and community gardens. Butterflies assist in the process of cross pollination. A total of 75% of the world’s flowering plants and 35% of our food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce.
Today, Monarch butterflies and many other pollinators are decreasing because of the loss of their native habitats and a shrinking supply of the plants they rely on for food and nurseries. During her presentation, Markham will show how creating a garden environment that attracts butterflies provides a habitat for a variety of beneficial insects, birds, bees and other wildlife, helping both ourselves and our environment.
Markham, an officer in the Norfolk Garden Club, co-chairs the club’s butterfly garden committee, which establishes and maintains several butterfly gardens around Norfolk, including the one at the Stony Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, which was restored after many years of neglect with the help of a grant from the Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association.
Markham has been gardening and breeding perennials and award-winning irises for more than 35 years. She is also a beekeeper, a garden and exhibition judge, an officer in several local and national iris societies, and a writer and presenter on various gardening topics.
The Franklin Garden Club, founded in 1987, is a member of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts.
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| Franklin Garden Club: “Gardening for Butterflies and Other Pollinators” - Feb 5 |
