Due to the collective efforts of several departments and student groups at LMU, we have successfully established a Pollinator Garden in the Twin Oaks area (behind Doheny- Palm South Dorms) that attracted Monarch Butterflies this Summer! The project was the brainstorm of a group of ASLMU students, led by graduated Senior 2024 Josh Petteruti, then VP of Sustainability, with CURes staff member Lisa Fimiani who began meeting in October of 2023 to discuss possible locations on Campus. In December Lisa Fimiani called an on-site meeting with the students and Facilities Management (FM) to come up with a plan to re-green an area we affectionately named the Twin Oaks Project. The goal was to weed around the beautiful twin Coast Live Oak trees in their courtyard and add native plants to enhance the beauty and functionality of the area for people and wildlife. The idea was also to create more habitat for birds and butterflies to thrive and protect the Oaks in the process. Prior to and during Earth Week in April 2024, with a fleet of students volunteering on various days, we put in over 100 plants, funded by several departments. You can read about those initial efforts here: https://curesblog.lmu.edu/cures-participates-in-multiple-earth-day-events-during-the-month-of-april/.
FM started an extensive drainage improvement process and created a new DG path for carts to use. This was critical to making sure the Oak trees had proper drainage during the rainy season and the newly planted areas, that had been used as informal pathways, remained planted and not trampled.
During the summer months the native Narrowleaf Milkweed that was planted to attract Monarch butterflies in the pollinator garden in April did just that, and Lisa Fimiani had to quickly replace some of the denuded plants with new ones for the hungry Monarch caterpillars in August, with the help of our student staff member, Elisa Rosado.
To her surprise and absolute delight a few weeks later, Lisa discovered newly hatching adult Monarch butterflies in the nearby newly planted area – thus completing the cycle of life for these Monarchs: first with egg laying, then the development of caterpillars, and then the ultimate hatching of adult butterflies from chrysalis’ in newly created habitat nearby.
Western Monarch Butterflies are in a decline https://xerces.org/monarchs/western-monarch-conservation, so every effort to provide the host plants and safe transformation areas for their dwindling population to rest, refuel, lay eggs, and start a new life cycle, is critical to the longevity of the butterflies on the West Coast.
CURes is giving a big shout out to ASLMU, the Center for Service and Action, CSJ, Green LMU, and Facilities Management for this amazingly successful project. We are proud to partner with student groups and LMU departments dedicated to making and keeping LMU green! ‘
