We hope you’ll join us for the first St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour:
Date: Saturday, June 20, 2015
Time: 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Cost: $20
Registration for this year’s event is closed. Stay tuned for information about next year’s tour.
Monarch butterfly sipping nectar from a New England Aster.
Native milkweeds feed monarch caterpillars, whose populations are plummeting. Coneflowers furnish feeding platforms for tiger swallowtail butterflies and provide seeds to goldfinch. Ruby-throated hummingbirds love to visit native cardinal flowers and red buckeye trees for nectar. Native plants produce a wide variety of ecological services for native wildlife, improve the health of neighborhoods by not requiring toxins for maintenance, and help sustain our planet.
How native landscaping compares with traditional lawns
However, for years, traditional landscaping has focused on planting non-native hostas, day lilies, and boxwoods that look nice, but furnish food only to deer and slugs. All Midwestern songbirds feed their young insects, especially butterfly caterpillars. A pair of nesting chickadees need to feed their offspring between 6,240 and 9,120 caterpillars to successfully raise their young. No American butterfly caterpillars feed on hostas, day lilies or tulips. Over 100 different species of caterpillars feed on native goldenrods, asters, dogwoods and viburnums. Our native oak trees support a whopping 518 different species of native caterpillars!