The first stage of the Butterfly Garden project has been completed! Today Tom and I went to the Madison brush processing center on Olin Avenue and purchased a load of mulch, about three cubic yards, which was loaded into his trailer with a huge bucket loader. Several of our great Gardening Team volunteers met us at the site with wagons, wheelbarrow, buckets and various rakes and shovels. In about an hour, we unloaded, hauled and spread enough wood mulch to cover all of the bare and thin areas. There is mulch left over for future needs.
To summarize our efforts to date, beginning in early June we measured and outlined boundaries, leaving space for the city mowers to get between our garden and the trees and the bike ramp. Several people helped collect large cardboard boxes and laid them out. Then many trips were made to various wood mulch sources and wood chips were spread over the cardboard. This was done mostly through June into early July, and now is finished! We were pleased to see that the mulch stayed in place through a lot of heavy rain and wind storms. The project has had wonderful help from at least sixteen individuals, on about a dozen different days, adding up to roughly 40 “person hours”. Thank you Gardening Volunteer Team!
Sometime in September hopefully, when the weeds have been smothered, we will resume our efforts. In order to plant seeds the cardboard and mulch will need to come off, and the soil lightly tilled. Then the really fun part, putting in some plants and sowing lots of seeds can happen. Tune in again for the next stage!
