Students dig in to provide food, habitat for monarch butterflies
REBECCA S. GRATZ / THE WORLD-HERALD
Second-grader Beckett Navratil, 7, helps plant a butterfly garden at St. Margaret Mary School, joining a national effort to provide habitat for monarch butterflies.
http://www.omaha.com/news/education/students-dig-in-to-provide-food-habitat-for-monarch-butterflies/article_36dcef9c-49de-5844-985a-1adf7e8d35a6.html
POSTED: TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015 12:30 AM
By Julie Anderson / World-Herald staff writer
About 30 students and 10 adults fanned out across a terraced slope behind St. Margaret Mary School last week, digging holes next to color-coded flags and tucking more than 200 matching plants into the ground.
A week before, another group of students and volunteers dug and planted at St. Albert School in Council Bluffs.
The new plants at both schools have the same purpose: to attract butterflies and monarchs in particular.
The key feature in both gardens is milkweed, a plant that provides the only food for newly emerged monarch butterfly larvae, an iconic species that has struggled in recent years.
FULL story at link.