Creating monarch and pollinator habitat for the Choctaw, OK community.

The City of Perry have allowed the Community to use the space of Rainbow Park for a Community Garden. The vision for this garden is for multiple purposes. It will be the Outdoor Classroom for Perry Schools, it will host community raised beds for individuals and families, and another area will be specifically planted to donate to the local food bank and organizations like Food Bank. Pollinator gardens will be on the perimeter or the garden, which is 1.8 acres, and sprinkled between the food plots.

Butterfly garden planted with milkweed in the City of Lawton’s Elmer Thomas Park was constructed in 2017. In 2020, the Lawton Enhancement Trust Authority has made the decision to almost double the size of the garden.

Belle Isle’s new garden also attracted lots of visits from pollinators. We collected quite a few caterpillars there to raise in the hut at home. These were part of the 60-count mentioned above.

We’re planning a second garden next year, closer to a main entrance, to encourage more patrons to get involved. We are thrilled that Carolyn Manes (Master Gardener) will continue to volunteer, and newly-minted Master Gardener, Rick Wicker, will adopt it, since he lives in the neighborhood.

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who are signing up to make these gardens a reality! Our dream is to install a garden at every library in the Metro system.

Thanks to the managers of Warr Acres (Barbara Beasley) and Belle Isle (Cassie Spindle), for allowing us to use their libraries as the “guinea pigs” for this project. We’re proud of our libraries for joining this important educational effort.

The Warr-Acres Library garden enjoyed lots of Monarch visitors last summer, although we didn’t get many tag-and-release opportunities. We released about 60 butterflies, but few hatched on the weekends. We’ll hope for better luck next year, but of course we can all feel good just knowing how helpful this garden was, to the Monarchs and other pollinators. And a fun new sighting occurred there recently: a clutch of Bordered Patch caterpillars on our Cow-pen daisies!

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who are signing up to make these gardens a reality! Our dream is to install a garden at every library in the Metro system.

Thanks to the managers of Warr Acres (Barbara Beasley) and Belle Isle (Cassie Spindle), for allowing us to use their libraries as the “guinea pigs” for this project. We’re proud of our libraries for joining this important educational effort.