Southold monarch waystations ease butterflies’ journeys
Friday, June 13, was a lucky day for butterflies and other pollinators on the North Fork as a local nature preserve was dedicated as a “Monarch Waystation.”
These pesticide- and insecticide-free managed gardens focus on ensuring that nectar-rich milkweed, the monarch’s favorite life sustaining plant, is plentiful for the iconic insect. In Southold, the Custer Native Garden is now part of the worldwide movement of thousands of gardens certified as native plant habitats. And in Cutchogue, the Downs Farm Preserve will join the network of monarch waystations this coming fall.
ReWild Long Island and Monarchs Matter, an international organization, formed a partnership to encourage communities to plant more milkweed. Monarchs Matter is the brainchild of 16-year-old Cynthia Zhang of Great Neck, a ReWild volunteer and environmental activist, who in 2023 turned her passion for preventing biodiversity loss into creating Monarchs Matter.
Waystations around the world support the butterflies on their multi-generational, 3,000-mile migration, providing stopping points along a journey. According to a ReWild press release, “The new Custer Preserve Monarch Waystation is made possible through Monarchs Matter’s Monarch Waystation Program, which empowers schools, faith centers, museums, and other community groups to fully fund, plant, and maintain monarch habitats.”
Two dozen volunteers and elected officials gathered at the Custer native garden, passing through the garden gate onto a thick path of wood chips into the 3,600-square-foot, town-owned preserve. Surrounded by an 8-foot-tall deer deterrent fence, it’s a wall-to-wall pollinator’s paradise. Blanketing the plot are native plants, including anise hyssop, goldenrod, white yarrow, sassafras, mountain mint, sunflowers, and the plant monarchs most depend on, common milkweed, which is uncommonly fragrant.
Kicking off the dedication ceremony, Ralph Reinertsen, co-chair of Rewild North Fork and chair of the environmental committee for the Southold Peconic Civic Association, thanked Supervisor Al Krupski, the town board, the volunteers, the Group for the East End, the Southold Peconic Civic Association, ReWild North Fork and the Suffolk Alliance for Pollinator, which recruited fifth and sixth graders from Southold Elementary School to help plant.
He added that this garden, situated to the left of the Custer Institute and Observatory, has spurred the creation of several other monarch waystations on the North Fork, including one at River and Roots community garden in Riverhead, one at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Southold and one at Peconic Community School in Cutchogue.
Reinertsen’s wife, ReWild Co-chair, Nancy DePas Reinertsen, decked out in her monarch gear — an orange T-shirt of numerous butterfly varieties, wrist to elbow blue butterfly gardening arm protectors and rubber knee high boots — focused part of her speech on young Ms. Zhang, saying that “she’s very impressive.”
Mr. Krupski said, “This plot underscores why we preserve land. Otherwise, this could have been houses. As a farmer, I can say all of our pollinators are important.”
A ribbon-cutting ceremony followed to cheers and applause. A similar ceremony will place in Cutchogue at the Downs Farm Preserve in the fall.
