Miami Native Plant Gardens Designed for the Future

Mary Benton of Miami Shores is on a mission to bring back native butterflies and birds, and – if things get wild enough – maybe even a fox or two.

Yard by yard, starting with her corner lot where clouds of zebra longwing butterflies can be found swirling in the shade of a large black olive tree, Benton has started a movement.

Her nonprofit, Bound by Beauty, was recently awarded a grant by H&R Block and Nextdoor to create a butterfly garden at the Brockway Memorial Library in Miami Shores, as well as educate neighbors on the benefits of native plants. Benton is collaborating on the project with local artists and businesses, including Mima Market, which distributes free home gardening kits to participating neighbors. Other partners include Zellajake Farm and Garden and local botanical design studio Plant the Future. Artist Kim Heise has created watercolors for digital templates created to inspire garden design.

Benton believes gardens build community.

“Saving Butterflies 101 brings neighbors together to make our community safer, stronger, healthier, more beautiful, resilient and sustainable, block by block,” Benton wrote in her winning application for the project, one of 10 selected from more than 2,000 across 50 states.

“I was so surprised when I first moved to Miami eight years ago that no one was talking about climate change,” Benton said. She set out to learn about its impacts, especially in shorefront areas like Miami Shores. Wanting to educate others, she finally settled on restoring native habitats as her means. Her epiphany came after experiencing the transformation of a monarch chrysalis.

“Such beauty needed to be protected,” Benton recalls thinking.

Today her yard is not only a haven for monarchs, but also other endangered and threatened species, including the atala butterfly, zebra longwing and an assortment of moths, including the dainty sulfur moth, a pale yellow specimen that dotes on the small, daisy-like flowers of the Spanish needle plant, often found in abandoned lots and overgrown swales. In Benton’s yard, this native plant has prime real estate, revered as much as a prized orchid.

On a cloudy winter morning, she gingerly led an informal tour through her colorful oasis, her long ponytail poking out from her straw hat, introducing each plant or tree or flower as if it were a dear friend.

“On a sunny day, the whole tree hums with bees,” said Benton of a nearby native firebush. “It’s a very comforting sound.”

As is the solar-powered water fountains, flittering of bird wings and Benton’s light footsteps through the whimsically adorned yard that is home to various feral cats, a nursery of butterfly weed and a collection of traditional Peruvian hornos de barro, tiny “ovens” with human faces used for cooking or boiling water for tea. It’s an eclectic mix that offers a home to all, including the butterflies she hopes to save and the occasional neighbor or lost soul that needs nurturing.

Even insects get a special welcome. When Benton spotted a monarch butterfly struggling in the grass, she rushed in to rescue it.

“Oh, I know this guy,” she said as she peered closely at the quivering insect in her hand. “He’s missing a leg!” And with that, she opened her hand to release him into the wildlife sanctuary she’s created.

By saving butterflies, we can save ourselves. That’s the philosophy behind Bound by Beauty, where volunteers are weaving a web of connections between neighbors as they weave a web of corridors between butterfly and wildlife gardens.

Across town at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, kindred spirit Daniela Champney, also a volunteer, is enlisting neighbors to create a wildlife corridor with pine rockland native plants through the Connect to Protect Network (CTPN) program. Homeowner gardens are used as steppingstones between the remnant rockland habitats that survive in county parks and preserves. So far, more than 1,000 residents, churches and schools have joined the free program, which comes with a starter kit of plants.

“If we lose these plants, we lose the butterflies, too,” said Champney, CTPN’s program manager. Butterflies are the star attraction for many gardeners, whose interest in natives is piqued by the idea they are helping restore balance to a denuded and often sterile landscape.

CTPN gardeners engage in citizen science as they track what grows successfully, which insects show up and whether these small patches of habitat are helping to save an entire ecosystem on the brink of extinction.

“We’re trying to make connections between the few fragments that are left,” Champney said.

Meanwhile, back in Benton’s garden, with the sun out, flowers shining bright, butterflies taking flight and bees buzzing, she shared a broad smile. She is obviously delighted in what she has created. But she’s only getting started.

“Next week is swale safari time,” she said as she surveyed a strip of land beyond the sidewalk.

“There’s so much life in our swales,” she continued longingly, “if only we let the weeds grow.”

CREATE BEAUTY & SAVE THE BUTTERFLIES

Create your own biodiverse sanctuary with the Bound by Beauty project. Plant native plants to attract wildlife and interact with nature and neighbors to create a more resilient community. Visit boundbybeauty.org to learn more.

Join the Connect To Protect Network program to save South Florida’s native species and pine rockland by planting native pineland species. Visit fairchildgarden.org/CTPN to learn how.