The traffic median at St. Ann Drive in the Idle Hour Neighborhood was recently certified as a "Monarch Butterfly Waystation" by Monarch Watch, a national organization committed to saving the butterfly from extinction through habitat loss.
The Idle Hour Neighborhood Alliance planted the St. Ann median with native flowers, grass, shrubs and trees this spring. Among the flowers planted were a large number of milkweeds – both swamp milkweed and orange butterfly milkweed. A minimum of 10 milkweed plants and four nectar plants, like asters, coneflower or goldenrod, are necessary for a garden to be certified as a Monarch Waystation.
These created habitats can be created in home gardens, at schools, businesses, parks, zoos, nature centers, along roadsides and on unused plots of land.
In the American Midwest much habitat for Monarchs has been destroyed in recent years through the planting of Round-up ready crops. The vast majority of these food crops are now grown in a form that resists being sprayed with Round-up so that blanket herbicide spraying is routinely done over very large areas, killing weeds that sustained insects in the past, including milkweed.