“Gardens have a power beyond being beautiful for us, healing for us, a power and efficacy for engaging all species, for taking care of the planet and the creatures around us that give us the gift of our own lives.” — Paraphrase from Benjamin Vogt’s “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future”
On July 1, 2020, I planted three swamp milkweed plants in a six-foot-by-six-foot garden bed not far from my front door. Know that these plants are growing in a free-edged, raised bed rich in organic matter, not in a swamp! Swamp milkweed is smaller, more contained, and showier than common milkweed, more suitable for the home garden. Find many attractive native New England milkweeds at GoBotany.
That July, four years ago, unbeknownst to me, a monarch butterfly placed an egg on one of the newly established Asclepias incarnata. On August 3, a nearly full-grown monarch caterpillar moved among the leaves of that plant, and days later, I discovered an exquisite gold-dotted chrysalis. My illustrated milkweed chronicle was published in The Berkshire Edge on August 24. The story was continued in a special edition of “Nature’s Turn” on August 27, recounting the emergence of an adult monarch butterfly soon after the first story was submitted. That column is titled “Monarch butterfly emerges, flexes its wings, flutters, flies.” The timeline from egg to adult is sketched here.
After four years of growing swamp milkweed, two new milkweed-eating insects arrived a few weeks ago. On August 21, 2024, I spotted a pair of spikey-haired, orange, black and white striped caterpillars feeding on a milkweed leaf.
Easily identified as tussock moth larvae, Euchaetes egle, they were positioned precisely opposite each other on either side of the leaf’s center vein, one head even with the other’s tail. Many more tussock moth caterpillars took stations in the milkweed patch. I was concerned that they might decimate the plants, like imported cabbage worms on food crops, but I didn’t have an impulse to kill them. I found a source that cautioned against harming these native caterpillars, and I reasoned that the plants had grown for months before being defoliated. Besides, my original planting had thrived and filled out the bed. Click here for another perspective.
On the same day that tussock moth caterpillars introduced themselves to me, I discovered a pair of swamp milkweed beetles mating nearby.
Current Opportunities, Recent Event:
Grow Native Massachusetts presents Benjamin Vogt in a 52-minute illustrated, recorded lecture, “A New Garden Ethic.” Find it here.
Take to local meadows and fields to experience autumn’s brilliant wildflower display. Pictured below, participants in Berkshire Botanical Garden’s “Asters and Goldenrods” field program on Saturday, September 7. Program instructor Ted Elliman, botanist, is the author, with Native Plant Trust, of the superb field guide “Wildflowers of New England,” published by Timber Press.
