Butterfly nation

From October 1-14 Yates NZ is giving away free seed packets of butterfly friendly plants to help attract the beautiful insects (and important pollinators) into our gardens. Register for free seeds here.

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It’s Saturday morning in the butterfly garden at Te Puna Quarry Park, near Tauranga, and while monarchs flit and flutter 83-year-old Mary Parkinson is clambering up a rock face to plant a prickly euphorbia, while 80-year-old Norm Twigge tames a wayward shrub with loppers.

The pair, who met as trustees of the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust, have for the past 2 years combined their talents in the garden, one of the many themed areas in the 32ha park, after Norm, a lifelong butterfly enthusiast, moved to Tauranga from Whakatane.

Norm Twigge and Mary Parkinson in the Te Puna Quarry Park butterfly garden. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Mary, NZ Gardener’s Bay of Plenty Gardener of the Year in 2010 and long-time Tauranga Orchid Society member, started helping at the former gravel quarry at the behest of her sister and foundation volunteer, Jo Dawkins, after a large donation of Cymbidium orchids arrived.

The butterfly garden, on a terrace in the area planted with orchids, was developed in 2007 after Mary spotted a self-seeded swan plant amid 3m-high gorse. “Actually, the butterflies invited themselves,” she says. “They found the plant and laid their eggs, all I did was try and give them a home.”

Pride of Madeira echium provide good food for monarch butterflies. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Each year she raises as many monarchs as possible which, at various times, means wasp and preying mantis patrols, as well as hauling buckets of water in summer to keep nectar-rich flowers in peak condition.

“I just keep suggesting things and then have to get stuck in and get the work done,” Mary says, recalling that her offer to stage a Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust conference in Tauranga in 2009 also meant clearing and planting more of the terrace in readiness for a conference visit.

A small hatching house was added when she and fellow volunteer Shona Purves decided to feed caterpillars inside to protect them from wasps. Thanks in part to public response – containers of caterpillars left on site – it was quickly apparent a larger house was needed.

In 2016 Mary and Norm extended the larger, second house in support of a MBNZ Trust project that saw UK conservationist Steve Wheatley and local entomologist Peter Maddison investigate the forest ringlet butterfly, in decline in lowland areas. Norm, who has been recording forest ringlet sightings in the Mt Ruapehu area for 20 years, was also be involved, particularly during the trial breeding phase.

An admiral caterpillar on a nettle leaf. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Norm raises admiral butterflies, both red and yellow, in the quarry garden. Loss of habitat is the major problem facing these butterflies as nettles are essential to their life cycle. “This is a public garden so we can’t grow big areas of nettles,” Norm says. “Someone’s always got to touch – even if there are warning signs – which means the size of our admiral populations will always be limited.”

He’s also keen to see if any “migrants” that blow over from Australia – blue moon, painted lady and the lesser wanderer –  can be encouraged to breed.

“The biggest thing is the lack of somewhere warm for them to overwinter,” he says, adding that while living in Whakatane he tried heating a room overnight to see if he could create the right conditions for some lepidopteran visitors. “The power bill soon made me see sense.”

A blue moon butterfly visited the Quarry Park in 2014. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Most butterflies feed on the same flowers and Mary recommends grevilleas, Montanoa (tree daisy), echiums, zinnias, wallflowers and collarette dahlias. “Any cottage garden flowers are good.”

Norm notes many lawn “weeds” are also great butterfly food, including clover and dandelion flowers. “And buddleias are fantastic,” he says. “There are several that don’t seed but sadly they’re all regarded as pest plants. It’s known that butterflies can detect food from 2km away so planting the right things means butterflies in the area will come.”

The white-flowered swan plant and the two brightly coloured Asclepias curassavica (tropical milkweed) provide nectar for monarchs, while the plants themselves play host to monarch eggs, feed the caterpillars and are often home to the resulting chrysalis. Providing enough swan plant for very hungry caterpillars stresses many people, Mary says, and over the years she’s taken in thousands of caterpillars to raise.

A monarch feeds on Dahlia ‘Pooh’, a favourite plant in the butterfly garden. Photo: Sandra Simpson

In 2016 Mary tagged and released 400 monarchs from March 1 until the end of June “when I ran out of tags”. It’s hoped that anyone who finds or photographs a tagged butterfly will go to the MBNZ Trust website and record the “white dot” number and where the insect was found so giving researchers an idea of how far the insects travel and clues to where they cluster to overwinter.

The park’s lone swan plant of 9 years ago has morphed into many more, both in the butterfly garden and beyond, although Mary accepts they need thinning to stop them spreading too far.

“If you’re worried about swan plants seeding through your garden, snip off the green pods before they burst,” she advises. “Swan plants don’t have a long life, maybe 3 or 4 years, so you want at least one new one coming on each year.”

Feeding notes:

See a list of nectar plants to feed butterflies at the MBNZ Trust website.

When buying swan plants from garden centres check they are spray free and keep your garden spray free.

Keep some swan plants under wraps (old net curtains, mosquito nets) so not all have eggs on them and/or are eaten.

Pumpkin can be used as food only at the end stage of a caterpillar’s life (2cm+). Any earlier and the butterfly will emerge deformed.

Wasps, ants, preying mantis and passion-vine hoppers all predate on one stage or another of the butterfly life cycle.

Lend a Hand: Mary and Norm are always looking for helpers. To volunteer simply turn up at Te Puna Quarry Park at 9am on a Tuesday, taking your own smoko.

This article was first published in NZ Gardener and appears here with permission.

Happy Birthday Quarry Park!

Volunteers old and new gathered for lunch today at Te Puna Quarry Park to mark 20 years since the first work day – with people who were at that first event recalling how daunting the task seemed with blackberry, gorse, pampas grass and wilding pines everywhere (not to mention the goats, rabbits and possums)!

But start they did, and now – 20 years later – the park is “the jewel in the Western Bay crown”, according to Cr Don Thwaites who was standing in for Mayor Garry Webber, and all built on volunteer labour.

The Vege Grower was the park society’s foundation treasurer and I occasionally help out with publicity so we’ve known the place since its inception. Today, the Vege Grower recalled hearing blasting from his childhood home when the site was still a working quarry and he was also able to clarify why there aren’t many photos from the first work days – there was nowhere to get a shot from, the place was a jungle!

Te Puna Quarry Park Society president Ian Cross and patron Shirley Sparks cut the anniversary cake before lunch. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Shirley Sparks, who got neighbours interested in redeveloping the site as a public park and is now the society’s patron, recalled how she and husband David would often be milking when blasting took place. “You can imagine the animals’ reaction to the noise. Unfortunately for us we were standing below the cows’ tails …”

Society president Ian Cross paid tribute to “the three ladies of the quarry” – Shirley, Jo Dawkins (who seems to spend every waking moment working at the quarry, bar Wednesdays (golf day) and who is a plantswoman par excellence) and Dulcie Artus, longtime secretary, former longtime treasurer, until recently longtime QuarryFest organiser, website worker, brochure designer … what he didn’t mention was writer of funding applications which I know from experience is a tedious, and often thankless, task.

I apologise for the quality of the photos, taken on my phone (won’t do that again).

Amid much banter two kauri trees were planted by Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless (left) and Western Bay of Plenty District councillor (and quarry neighbour) Don Thwaites. Photo: Sandra Simpson

The two council representatives called on 99-year-old Alf Rendall, who is still a regular volunteer, to lend a hand with the second tree. (Photo-bombing the shot at bottom left is Bay of Plenty Times photographer George Novak.) Photo: Sandra Simpson

The formalities concluded with a release of monarch butterflies. Pictured from left are Greg Brownless, Don Thwaites, Jo Dawkins, Mary Parkinson (founder of the butterfly garden, orchid garden and sister to Jo) and George Novak. Photo: Sandra Simpson

To hear an interview with Alf Rendall, a longtime Tauranga photographer, go here. Or go here to read more about his 2015 book Historic Tauranga From Above.

Fluttering by

UK conservationist Steve Wheatley has landed at Te Puna Quarry Park to work with Katikati entomologist Peter Maddison and Tauranga butterfly expert Norm Twigge on an investigation of the rare native forest ringlet butterfly.

Norm Tiwgge (left) and Steve Wheatley enjoy a cuppa at Te Puna Quarry Park this morning. Photo: Sandra Simpson

The Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust has brought out Steve, who works for the Butterfly Conservation Trust and is on a 3-month sabbatical, especially for the project. He will be based in the Tauranga area until Christmas, then moves on to Auckland and the South Island.

Norm has been recording forest ringlet sightings in the Mt Ruapehu area for 20 years and says there are six or seven areas nationwide where the butterfly is found but not a lot is known about breeding patterns or why Dodonidia helmsii is declining in numbers in lowland areas, so it’s hoped this project will fill in some of those gaps. According to the Nature Watch website, the butterfly has become “significantly rarer over the last 50 years”.

The park’s butterfly garden features in the December issue of NZ Gardener and includes interviews with the garden’s founder Mary Parkinson and, since he moved to Tauranga from Whakatane a year ago, her right-hand man Norm.

Making a difference

A lifetime – two lifetimes – spent working with plants and flowers has taken a new twist as sisters Mary Parkinson and Jo Dawkins put their energies into helping develop Te Puna Quarry Park,  the Western Bay’s premier public garden.

In 2005 I managed to get these two busy bees to stand still long enough for a photo. They haven’t changed much. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Born on a farm in Oropi, near Tauranga, the sisters grew up surrounded by a large, lovingly tended garden. Their father, Arnold Shanks, had emigrated to New Zealand from Northern Ireland and met their England-born mother, Christine, on a ship when returning to Britain on a visit. She was going home after a stay in South Africa.

And it was their father who was the keen gardener, although they say both their parents loved “beautiful things” and the home and garden were decorated accordingly.

Volunteering at the outbreak of World War 2, Arnold was sent to Greece, captured and spent four years in an Austrian prison camp. “He said the only thing that kept him sane was thinking about the garden and always redesigning it,” Jo says. “He had a small tin of watercolour paints with him and we still have some of the paintings he did of his ideas. The love of gardening kept him going.” The 0.4ha garden comprised a tennis court, lily ponds and flower beds and was the scene of annual church garden parties after the war.

A visitor from England snaps a souvenir of one of the Quarry Park’s many sculptures. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Mary’s first ambition was to become a marine biologist, dropped, she says, because she couldn’t swim well. Instead, she opened a florist shop at No. 2 Devonport Rd in Tauranga in 1956. “The shop became available and opportunity strikes only once, although I was terrified about going into business,” she says. And it may have been an inherited talent from her father – who had created his bride’s elaborate bouquet for their wedding in 1933 – which nudged her in this direction.

Vogue Flowers was a success, although Mary says “we made a lot of friends but not much money”. Highlights included making presentation bouquets for visiting Queen Sirikit of Thailand in 1962 and one of water lilies for Queen Elizabeth for her visit in 1963.

When their mother became ill with cancer and wanted to make a final return to England in 1958, Mary handed the business to Jo, who was part-way through teacher training. After her mother’s death, Mary worked as a florist at London’s Savoy Hotel where she prepared arrangements for such people as Princess Margaret, ballerina Alicia Markova and flamboyant pianist Liberace who always wanted a floral grand piano.

While in London, she attended the Cordon Bleu school run by the doyenne of 1950s English domestic style, Constance Spry. “We cooked in the morning and did flowers in the afternoon,” Mary recalls. “They were big, massed arrangements which complemented the houses they were in.”

On her return, Mary rejoined Vogue Flowers until the birth of her first child in 1963, when she sold the business.

But she and Jo have never stopped working with plants – they both worked for John and Mary Ewart when they began to grow Tauranga’s first commercial carnation crop, while Mary has had a nursery specialising in kiwifruit seedlings, and Jo has a citrus orchard and garden nursery.

“There’s a lot of pleasure to be had in planting a seed and watching it come up and flower,” Mary says of their lifelong interest in growing things.

Cymbidium orchids blooming at the Quarry Park. Photo: Sandra Simpson

She is also something of an orchid expert, having joined the Tauranga Orchid Society 30 years ago and also has previously run a business hybridising and exporting South African disa orchids.

But even Mary admits she had no idea the orchid area at Te Puna Quarry Park would become what is believed to be the largest outdoor planting of cymbidium orchids in the Southern Hemisphere.

Jo, whose home is in the shadow of the former quarry north of Tauranga, has been part of the community project since it began almost 20 years ago and has served a term as president of the society’s committee, while Mary joined the volunteer workers 18 years ago.

“It’s great to be part of a volunteer group creating something for the community,” Jo says. The park has always placed an emphasis on art too, and work in the park includes sculpture, mosaic and pottery.

“It’s such a magical place,” she says, “but it was very hard in the beginning, as a gardener, to adjust to the size of it. It was no good planting just one of something, we had to think in big drifts.” More than 4000 cymbidium orchids might be described as a big drift. “We were lucky the orchids were the first plants to arrive and we could choose a site,” Mary says.

Four truckloads of “fill” orchids, donated by former nurseryman John Kenyon, began the planting and since then almost all the plants have been donated. To plant them on the steeper banks, the orchids were rolled down and Mary and her helpers (most in their 70s and 80s) clambered after them and chipped them in where they stopped. The orchid area now features several other varieties as well, so there’s always something flowering.

These days Mary’s most often to be found in the butterfly garden, a project that had its genesis in 2006 when she saw a swan plant growing in a patch of weeds on the “middle terrace”.

A grant from the Bay of Plenty regional council’s Environmental Enhancement Fund paid for a butterfly hatching house (and to protect caterpillars when predators are about) and a noticeboard, while in 2009 Wildflower World began a relationship with the garden donating seed to extend the butterfly area for a Monarch Butterfly New Zealand Trust conference in Tauranga which Mary, then a trustee, organised.

A release of newly hatched monarch butterflies in the Quarry Park’s butterfly garden. Photo: Sandra Simpson

During the breeding season Mary often responds to calls to rescue monarch caterpillars that have run out of food and has been trying try to establish a population of native red admiral and yellow admiral butterflies at the quarry. She’s at the quarry most days when the butterflies are hatching, and on hand for regular school visits. “When the ‘wild kids’ are given butterflies to hold it transforms them – the big smiles make it all worthwhile,” she says.

Jo, a former president of the International Plant Propagators Association, and Mary have developed a sub-tropical area, bounded on one side by Australian natives, including a prostate Banksia and winter-flowering grevilleas, much loved by birds, and on another by South African natives.

And they have both, along with grandchildren, created a mosaic “pool” at the bottom of a tumble of rocks which suggested itself to Jo as a dry waterfall. Small wooden “bridges” on the path add to the illusion.

Among plants of interest in this area are Chorisias (monkey no-climb trees) with trunks full of thorns and requiring some lateral thinking when it came to moving them for planting, a red banana palm and a rare pink version (in New Zealand) of the Tibouchina shrub.

A massed planting of lilies above the Herb Garden. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Jo has planted about five varieties of the Araucaria family, which includes monkey-puzzle and Norfolk Island pines, near the Chorisias, and groups of maples and magnolias in a new area, as well as a tackling a steep, hot bank which is being filled with grevilleas, native to Australia.

“We are especially grateful for the generosity of commercial and private growers,” Jo says. “We don’t have the finances to rush out and buy, for example, 50 hibiscus plants, but if we ask for, say, three we usually get 12.

“The quarry park isn’t a botanical garden, but we do want it to be botanically interesting,” she says. “The rewards for our hard work are to see people enjoying it.”

Te Puna Quarry Park is signposted off State Highway 2, just north of Te Puna, and is open daily during daylight hours. Free admission but a donation is appreciated.

A tui investigates a protea bloom. Photo: Sandra Simpson

This article is a combination of two pieces that were originally published by the Bay of Plenty Times and appear here with permission.

Granny’s Delirium 2

A peek into Granny’s parlour, ready for public inspection. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Pictures from the 2014 Tauranga Orchid Show.

Laelia lundii has been attracting attention, not always an easy plant to flower, according to an expert. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Commercial grower Russell Hutton has brought along award-winning Phalaenopsis orchids from Taiwan, not seen before in New Zealand and including a coppery shade. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Mary Parkinson (with a little help from her friends) makes up table decorations and posies for sale. Mary opened one of Tauranga’s first florist’s and has made bouquets for royalty and celebrities, including Liberace! Photo: Sandra Simpson

 

 

Garden news

Some bits and pieces from the world of gardening …

Gardener charged
Last week’s Herald on Sunday had a news brief saying that Clive Higgie, owner of Paloma Gardens near Wanganui, has been charged by the Ministry of Primary Industries – the first charge to be laid after raids on public and private property two years ago. MPI was hunting for an exotic kauri allegedly imported illegally. However, the HoS records Clive as saying the charges relate to an Australian fig tree!

Some Agathis specialists (the top specialists in the country are, ironically, the ones being raided) argue that the tree MPI is so concerned about, Agathis silbae from Vanuatu, is actually the already recognised and recorded Agathis macrophylla, which has been in New Zealand for some time. This 2012 backgrounder article on the controversy is a good read.

New fig tree with historic connections
A new fig tree from Katikati company incredible edibles may have links to some of the district’s Ulster Irish pioneers (Ulster Scots in the link) as it is thought the original cutting of Candy came from the garden at Athenree Homestead, built by Adela and Hugh Stewart in 1879.

Candy, a new fig from incredible edibles. Photo: incredible edibles

“Someone gave us the cutting and said it came from there,” says Fiona Boylan of incredible edibles. “Fig names have been causing problems in New Zealand for years, though – the same tree can produce different fruit in different soils and climates.”

Some of Adela’s original orchard still stands and in among the trees is at least one fig, although the day I visited the paddock was full of frisky young cattle (some with horns) so discretion was the better part of valour! Volunteers at the homestead make marmalade from “Adela’s citrus trees” and sell it as a fundraiser for the restoration project.

Fig expert John Dean, a life member of the Tree Crops Association who lives near Katikati (and who has a fig variety named for him), says there is a tree in the district known as “Mrs Stewart”, supposedly descended from a fig tree Adela had. He was planning to take a sample of the homestead tree to a South Island expert to see if it could be properly identified.

Blue moon update
Mary Parkinson of the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust says there are a good number of blue moon butterflies (native to Australia) around Papamoa while someone in Whakatane has 20 or so on a couple of camellia trees. Three males and two females have been confirmed at Te Puna Quarry Park near Tauranga but apparently there have been no confirmed sightings in Auckland so it’s just our bit of the coast that has been graced with their presence!

I recorded my sighting at the Quarry Park on the Monarch Trust website and Margaret Topzand of the trust has been in touch to say that “many sightings of blue moons are coming in, all blown over from Australia via Cyclone Ita”.

Seeds of success
Tomato seeds brought back from Italy by a solider after World War 2 have been distributed in the Timaru area with great success, thanks to Albert Peattie of the Timaru Horticultural Society. Read more here. (No “approved organisms” list then, obviously!)

Sunday digest

Full of virus – headaches, sneezing, coughing and overflowing sinuses – so here’s a digest to keep you going.

If you live in the Tauranga area don’t forget to collect seeds, take cuttings and stockpile excess plants for the Swapfest at Sydenham Botanic Park on the afternoon of March 16 (a Sunday). It’s only a gold coin donation to have a stand, and free to just come, look around and chat to the stall-holders. Geoff Brunsden of Wildflower World will be giving a talk on caring for pollinators … and promises a surprise treat as well! Full details on the Events page.

Butterflies are part of the busy legion of pollinators in the garden but the famed annual monarch migration from Canada to Mexico is in trouble – the numbers arriving in the over-wintering ground are at a record low. The largest area occupied by the butterflies was recorded in 1997 and reached 18ha. This season, the area fell to 0.67ha. The culprit, experts seem to agree, is the disappearance of milkweed in the US. Similar to our swan plant, milkweed is where the butterfly lays its eggs and the caterpillars feed until becoming a chrysalis.

I was all set to be a bigger and better monarch farm this summer but we haven’t seen any caterpillars since before Christmas – my total released is a paltry six butterflies. The monarchs come and hang round the swan plants but ants are carrying off the eggs and wasps the caterpillars before I can get to them.

Mary Parkinson, the volunteer who runs the butterfly garden at Te Puna Quarry Park, reports that an Australian painted lady butterfly, thought to have been blown across the Tasman in the spring gales, has laid eggs. I spotted one of these little butterflies in the quarry a fortnight ago. They are often blown to the west coast of the North Island, but not always as far as the east coast.

See some striking images here – the winning photos from the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual competition.

James Golden is a gardener in New Jersey (and he is either in, or coming very soon to, New Zealand – so if you see him say “hello”). This New York Times interview with him about his life, the garden he has created (Federal Twist) and his philosophy of gardening is superb.

Orchid hunter (and heir to an English castle) Tom Dyke Hart was captured by rebels in Colombia and held for nine months, convinced he was going to be killed at any time. To distract himself he designed his perfect garden … and has now created it. Read the story here.

A thoughtful reflection on street trees (in London in particular and England in general) by Tony Russell, including the new threats to urban trees from climate change and increased global trade.

When I was a young thing living in London I had been working most of one Saturday in spring to meet a report deadline. One of my colleagues, and a good friend, who lived in Surrey offered me a ride home in his new car as I was more or less on his way. How glorious it was to ride along Baker Street (I think it was) in the late afternoon after a long day inside with the sun-roof open through which I could see the plane trees with their fresh, new leaves – and Vivaldi’s Spring playing on the cassette deck. Would it surprise you to learn that this was about 1983 and I’d never come across a sun-roof before?

Tauranga is a city that, for some reason, seems to be populated by people who dislike trees. Why? Beats me. I was recently sent a 2002 report, Projected Environmental Benefits of Community Tree Planting which uses Atlanta, Georgia, as a model. Among the key findings:

• If tree-planting standards were applied to all surface parking lots in the Downtown Atlanta Study Area, mature trees would provide stormwater savings valued at $US491,000 and air pollution mitigation valued at $US7500 annually.

Go on, get outside and hug a tree!

Orchid Show, Part 2

Popped back to the Tauranga Orchid Show today, this time taking my tripod with me! (It makes a difference, believe me.) The show was judged this morning and so I was able to get photos of the grand champion – orchid and grower.

Conrad Coenen and his Grand Champion zygopetalum. Photo: Sandra Simpson

The champion orchid is a striking and dramatic colour combination, a deep plum that is almost black in places with green-outlined petals and a white-edged fall.

Conrad, who is vice-president of the society, and his partner Judy Shapland have a sales table at the show so if you’re going tomorrow, drop by and say hello. Judy is into clivias and breeds her own – her big event is coming up on October 6 with the Tauranga Clivia Display (see the Events page for details).

Reserve Champion is a gorgeous cymbidium, a striking burnished copper colour (grower Andy Price of Whakatane).

Reserve Champion, Tauranga Orchid Show 2013.

Another couple of people you should wave to at the show are Mary Parkinson and her sister Jo Dawkins who are beavering away just inside the entry. They work hard every year making up posies on the spot for people to buy and take home, one of the few times of the year they can be torn away from Te Puna Quarry Park where both are volunteers.

Jo Dawkins (left) and Mary Parkinson in among the flowers.

The Quarry Park’s new event – Spring Fling – is on next Sunday to celebrate gardens and gardening. Jo is leading a small group of organisers and Mary is planning some special butterfly events. See the Events page for details.

Butterfly notes

Don’t have any monarch butterfly caterpillars on your swan plants? I haven’t for a while, which has given the plant a chance to recover, but neither have I seen wasps which predate on every stage of the butterfly’s life.

Mary Parkinson, who founded and runs the butterfly garden at Te Puna Quarry Park, tells me that wasps are probably the culprits though – they don’t change their diet until about the end of February.

Passion-vine hoppers (fluffy bums) will also eat the caterpillar and chrysalis and although they’re about in smaller numbers than last year, they’re still about.

Mary advises moving potted swan plant indoors or covering the plant (mosquito netting, fine-mesh shade cloth, old net curtain) as there are likely to be eggs on it. “The trick is to protect caterpillars as much as possible. I have even seen an ant carry off a tiny caterpillar.”

The fine seeds of a swan plant – if you snap off the pods before they open you won’t have plants coming up everywhere. Photo: Sandra Simpson

If you suspect you have too many eggs for your swan plant to support, wipe some off and cover the plant – it won’t stop more eggs being laid but it will reduce the number able to be laid.

Pumpkin shouldn’t be used for supplementary feeding until the caterpillars are in the end part of that stage of their life (2cm long or more). Younger caterpillars fed pumpkin will emerge from the chrysalis with deformed wings.

“It’s easy to underestimate how much a caterpillar will eat,” says Mary, a member of the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust. “But the faster they eat, the faster they’ll go into the chrysalis stage.”

A monarch feeds on cherianthus (wallflowers). Photo: Sandra Simpson

Any garden that wants to support a butterfly population must be spray free and must provide nectar all year round – old-fashioned flowers in strong colours is the general rule of thumb.

The butterfly garden at the Quarry has a new butterfly house – much roomier. Mary moves her caterpillars indoors so they build their chrysalis and emerge inside before being released into the garden.