Environmental Commission, with helping hands, creates second monarch waystation
OCEAN CITY – Ocean City isn’t just a friendly place for human tourists. The city’s Environmental Commission is making the island more welcoming to winged visitors that can rest, eat and renew here along their 2,000-mile migratory journeys.
Working with the Student Environmental Association from Ocean City High School, and using the little hands from Discovery World Preschool, the commission created an official Monarch Butterfly Waystation Wednesday, June 8, at the Bayside Center on Bay Avenue.
According to Environmental Commission Chairman Richard Bernardini, member Catherine Cipolla had the idea for a butterfly garden last year so they did an installation on the grounds of the Ocean City Tabernacle and partnered with its preschool, the Ark. Wednesday’s efforts were “phase two.” “We scouted other areas in the city and every year we’re going to try to install another butterfly garden to help the butterflies that fly through Ocean City,” Bernardini said.
At Bayside Center, the commission received a grant through the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions toward building a waystation – basically an area set aside with plants that attract and nourish monarch butterflies.
Cipolla explained to have a certified monarch waystation, there must be two different kinds of milkweed plant and five plants of each. “We’re going to use butterfly milkweed and we’re going to use swamp milkweed, two milkweeds common to our area,” she said. “That’s what the caterpillars need to crunch and munch on in order for them to get big enough to go into their chrysalis and emerge as butterflies. We have swamp milkweed today and we have butterfly milkweed on order.”
The adult butterflies need energy to make their trip back south to the mountains of Mexico each year so the waystation includes a variety of nectar plants, many of them blooming in the later summer and early fall, so the butterflies will have food to help sustain them on their trips south, she said.
Cipolla said the certified waystations have to be 100 square feet in size, get sun at least six hours a day and be in an environment free from pesticides.
“We have to be doing something environmentally safe so the caterpillars aren’t eating plants poisons have been sprayed on,” she said.
Bernardini said they chose the Bayside Center for a number of reasons. He lives at Third Street and would go to the center between Sixth and Seventh streets to kayak.
“I thought this was a natural place to put a garden and then I realized there was a preschool,” he said. “That’s great for the educational component.”
Discovery World is next door and the city allows the preschool to use a small, fenced-in playground area on the site. The monarch waystation is right behind the play area.
“It’s perfect for us to put the garden right next to the playground so (the children) can observe the butterflies and caterpillars and water their garden,” Cipolla said.
She added that the plants in the waystation are very hardy and should come back every year and multiply. “We get what we call a lot of volunteers, plants that come up somewhere else, so you can divide those up as they get larger or take the seeds and use those for some of our other environmental activities to do seed giveaways. That’s another piece where we can instruct the public on native plants,” Cipolla said.
Little hands
shape garden
Four members from the Student Environmental Association were helping build the garden, working with the Environmental Commission members to guide the hands of Discovery World preschoolers, who appeared to relish digging in the dirt and putting in the plants.
Olivia Heng, a senior at OCHS and liaison to the Environmental Commission, is the current president of the SEA. She said Ocean City offers many ways to get involved with the environment, such as beach cleanups with the student group, and that seaside communities provide a front-row seat to the impacts of climate change. Before coming to Ocean City, she and her siblings – SEA members Madeline Heng, the incoming president, and Joshua Heng, the incoming vice president – lived in Brigantine, where Hurricane Sandy damaged so many homes.
She plans to study computer engineering at college and has an environmental focus. Heng likes making apps and designing websites and is considering how to use data science in the environmental field, such as studying weather patterns and precipitation and how they affect different areas.
SEA Vice President Chanon Styer, also a senior at OCHS, enjoys being part of the student group.
“I just love it so much, first of all because we get to be outside,” Styer, of Estell Manor, said. “We get to connect with people in the community, the Environmental Commission and kids from the primary school and preschool and teaching them about monarch butterflies or plants.
“I’m learning, they’re learning, and we’re all bonding over being outside and helping out in nature,” she added.
Styer likes the monarch way station project “just knowing the little kids are going to come and learn about it. It’s hands-on too. They get to get away from the city aspect of Ocean City and they can put their hands in the dirt. They’re not stuck inside.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff