Gillespie Park’s butterfly garden continues to flourish

Residents from the Gillespie Park neighborhood came together on Feb. 24 to continue the park’s beautification project. The Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association Work Day event marked the next stage in developing the butterfly garden that surrounds the park pavilion.

The park's beautification process has been supported by local government grants, but members of the neighborhood also donated plants, mulch, pavers and other gardening materials for the project. Volunteers spent the morning planting approximately 50 plants that will support butterflies throughout their life cycle. The project will be complete this June, with butterfly cages to be added in the fall.

Children from the park’s Reading Room, a neighborhood-run after-school program, have been involved with the butterfly garden project as a way to learn about the evolution of a butterfly. “This project allows the kids who live near this park to take ownership of it,” Gillespie Park resident and volunteer Linda Jacob said. “It changes the dynamics of the park when the people who live there own it.”

Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association President Linda Holland hopes the butterfly garden will be more than a beautification project. “As new people come into the neighborhood, they want to be a part of it,” Holland said. “The butterfly garden is a way to engage the community, so our goal is to continue that engagement and then introduce new projects that do that as well.”