00:00:07:17 - 00:00:29:22
I first became interested in monarch butterflies about 25 or 30 years ago in my backyard garden. The butterflies were just coming fast and furious. Western Monarch has had a 99% population decline since the 1980s. I wanted to take additional steps to try to help save them. So this was actually a pilot program for monarchs in the rough.

00:00:29:22 - 00:00:43:09
The golf course was nice enough to give me a parcel of land where it was an out of play area. Nothing was growing here, so they gave this to me to create a monarch and pollinator habitat.


00:00:43:09 - 00:00:57:09
A lot of volunteers came out planted a lot of plants, including milkweed, nectar, plants and a succulents and drought tolerant plants that we also put in here. So we were able to buy mature plants, mature milkweed, native milkweed.


00:00:57:09 - 00:01:25:16
We were doing some experimentation with the different types of milkweed that we could offer. The activity right now is actually blowing me away, but I'm really excited about in this habitat is I think that we've taken kind of the perfect combination of drought tolerant plants like succulents, milkweed, nectarine plants and everything that a monarch butterfly and all


00:01:25:16 - 00:01:39:06
The pollinators would just love and put it all together in one place. This basically surpassed any expectation that I have. You can do this in residential areas as well. It doesn't have to be all native wear. It sometimes looks like a jungle.


00:01:39:06 - 00:01:52:01
You can have organization, but you can have the highest in the conservation. I think that's possible. And you know what? It was a lot of hard work, but I would rather be doing this than sitting behind any computer any day.