Hemingway Butterfly Garden: Mariposas del Mundo

2024 Greenspace Report

You can find group leader Kat Calhoun and her dedicated butterfly enthusiasts working to improve habitat at the Hemingway Creek Butterfly Garden, better known as Mariposas del Mundo, nearly every day. Milkweed, butterfly weed, cardinal flowers, and numerous other native pollinator species stand in fragrant patches all along this once-vacant lot. Over the past several years, volunteers have worked relentlessly to remove tires, wrappers, and old car parts from the creek and lot, transforming the former dumping site into a haven for frogs, birds, and butterflies. This summer, the group stewarded the existing plantings and added even more, making room for new flowerbeds by clearing an old brush pile and cutting a pathway through the forest on the other side of the creek. Mariposas del Mundo is such an exemplary habitat that entomologists from the Connecticut Agricultural Station came to study the milkweed there throughout the summer.

2024 Accomplishments

• 2 shrubs planted (2 Pussy Willow)
• 28 perennials planted (5 wild bergamot, 4 wild geraniums, 3 highbush blueberries, 4 snowberries, 3 wild indigo, 2 cardinal flower, 4 buttonbush, 3 red columbines )
• 2.0 yards mulch spread
• 10 events
• 22 volunteers
• 74 volunteer hours