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Toronto Zoo Butterflies
There's a lot more than animals at Toronto Zoo, I discovered recently. The zoo is huge and its Rouge Valley location in Scarborough is spectacular. I was visiting to look at plants, especially those most meaningful to a gardener. My guide was the zoo's manager of horticulture, John Ambrose, who has been instrumental in linking existing natural habitats in the Rouge to the fragments of forest on the tableland that the zoo rests on. He's also developing corridors of wildflowers for butterflies, especially for the resident species that don't move all that readily.
It was the butterfly garden that hit me most profoundly. While the kiddies are watching giraffes browse (in case you have a giraffe, you'll want to know they love dogwood) or trying to find the red panda asleep in a tree, you can be watching the action in the nearby butterfly meadow.
This is a brilliant concept. There are several kinds of meadows designed to attract butterflies, certainly enough variations to inspire any gardener. As you enter, you'll see planting that is very domestic and in a border about the size and shape grown in many city and suburban homes. The plants are very effective at pleasing butterflies, and what's also great is that you can put them in your own garden once steady fall rains begin.
Here are a few to consider: the luscious pink-purple of high mallow (Malva sylvestris var. mauritianar) or showy tick-trefoil (Desmodium canadense -- a spectacular native that looks like a blue lupine). There's bee balm (Monarda didyma), globe thistle (Echinops sp.), yarrows (Achillea spp.) and coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea); annuals such as calendula (Calendula spp.) and shrubs such as butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).
Then you drift into a wild area filled with asters (Aster spp.), Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana), coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata); and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta). At this time of year, all decked out in their brilliant colours, the plants are alive with the sound of buzzing
. You'll also see Queen Anne's Lace and Echium vulgare. Though they weren't planted and aren't native, the two plants attract butterflies.
What captured my fancy most was the Larval Food Plant Bed. If you've ever wondered where butterflies have their babies and how the young grow, this border demonstrates both amply. Butterflies like to lay their eggs on specific plants, so that the new-hatched babes can start munching immediately on the right food. They can turn a plant into a skeleton pretty quickly. This is where they stay (as pupa) until they emerge as full-blown butterflies.
The island border cut out of the grass may look a bit untamed, filled as it is with sunflowers (Helianthus cultivars), milkweed (Asclepias spp.), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) and native grasses such as big blue stem (Andropogon gerardii), but this is where caterpillars thrive.
There is a water supply and leaning pile of logs and rocks for shelter and sun-basking.
Kids would adore this butterfly-friendly setting, And it would seem easy to devote a small chunk of almost any garden to a similar one at home.
We also wandered through what Mr. Ambrose calls the goose landscape. Like any open space in Toronto, the zoo is plagued with Canada Geese. So it is growing barriers designed to interrupt movement between the birds' two favourite places -- open ponds and grass. It's also part of a program to diversify the landscape. When grasses grow long, plant life can return to its wild state. Geese hate long grass and shoving past shrubs.
In these areas serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.), birch (Betula papyrifera), dogwood (Cornus sericea), ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) and spirea (Spiraea alba) are all vying for positions. Any native plant or shrub would do, just as long as it's suitable for the growing condition in your area.
The Toronto Zoo, Meadowvale Road, Scarborough, Ont. 416-392-5929. Tomorrow is the zoo's 25th anniversary and there will be lots of extra staff to help you out.
Mea culpa: In my last column I suggested using mulch to bait all those "ugly black bugs and squoosh them." I must have been having a bad earwig day. To explain why, here's a message from Linda Gilkeson, entomologist extraordinaire from Victoria: "Those are ground beetles (big, black, fast, frightening guys) and they eat slug eggs, grubs, root maggot larvae, etc. A mulch is the very best way to encourage these long-lived, territorial beetles to colonize your garden. . . . To an entomologist with a particular soft spot for the predator insects, it is heartbreaking." Mea maxima culpa. I weep for all the squished black beetles and promise not to give this advice again.
Coming up is the Princess Margaret Hospital Gardens of Inspiration Tour. This fabulous day offers a tour of the rooftop healing garden at the hospital and conversations with famous gardeners, seminars and a visit to Neil Turnbull's wonderful country garden, along with a splendid lunch by Jamie Kennedy. Tickets are $200 (with a tax receipt); call 416-946-4574. I hope to see you there.
Copyright Marjorie Harris, 2005
CONTACT MARJORIE HARRIS
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