Millie Soriano is now in her fi fth year as an offi cial native plant gardener and she says it’s a rewarding part of her life.
By Millie Soriano
If you attended the Earth Day event at the Port Union Community Centre last month, you probably met me and the rest of the Rouge Butterflyway volunteers. We are hard to miss! You’ll usually see us wearing butterfly wings and deely boppers. We love talking about native plants and we’re happy to discuss them with anyone coming by our table.
When I moved to this neighbourhood in 2020 and was looking at my sad front garden, I was a newbie to the gardening world. I didn’t know anything about native plants. I just knew I wanted something different, something that would help pollinators and look beautiful at the same time.
Soon after that, Karen Heisz posted on the West Rouge Residents Facebook page that she was looking for volunteers to join the Rouge Butterflyway. The Butterflyway Project was started by the David Suzuki Foundation in 2017 as a cross-Canada movement to encourage gardeners to grow highways of habitat for bees and butterflies.
So I thought I’d give it a try. With Karen’s guidance and the help of other community members, I learned quite a bit the first year. One main lesson that I still believe in to this day is to START SMALL. I did not want to bite off more than I could chew. For this reason, I decided to only focus on the garden on one side of my house.
I learned how to properly prepare my soil by clearing all the weeds, feeding it with the right organic matter, laying out cardboard to prevent weed seeds from growing, organizing the sections where I wanted my native plants to be planted, and using natural cedar mulch. I urge you not to use coloured mulch as the dye will seep into our water.
Another great lesson I learned while figuring out where to put my plants was that they should be planted in groups of three or more. This makes it easier for pollinators to find them. When I got my plants from our native plant supplier or purchased them at one of the nurseries in our area, they were relatively small. I had to imagine the space they would take up when they were in their third year, which is the year they are known to thrive.
Once planted, they need to be watered regularly for the first year and during dry spells. In time, they all learn to stand tall and extend their roots deep into the soil so they don’t need much water at all.
I’m now in my fifth year as an official native plant gardener and it’s a rewarding part of my life. I care for the environment and love the difference I see first-hand. I have seen monarch butterflies benefit from the host plants in my garden and watched the tiniest metallic green sweat bees, large bumblebees and other pollinators fly from flower to flower.
If you are thinking about dipping your toe into the native gardening world, please reach out to us via the Rouge Butterflyway Project on Facebook or send us an email at rouge.butterflyway@gmail.com.