One by one, the butterflies are returning to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Port of Spain.
After starting in November, a group of volunteers, led by environmental activist and Serina Hearn of the non-governmental organisation Friends of Botanic Gardens of Trinidad and Tobago, created a garden of flower beds, which includes several host plants for native butterflies.
“The native plants have a relationship with the native insects, including the butterflies and the moths,” Hearn explains. “During the dry season, the rainy season, they wax and they wane with it. So we use native (plants).”
Host plants like milkweed are often overlooked and disregarded, cut down and put in landfills, a problematic nationwide habit.
[caption id="attachment_959895" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The Erato Longwing (Heliconius erato) rests on a flower at the Butterfly Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Port of Spain,on June 10. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
Butterflies and moths lay their eggs on host plants, which are usually specific to the type of butterfly or moth. The caterpillars also eat the plants after hatching. The decimation of native plants, therefore, naturally results in the decimation of butterfly species.
Hearn now wants to “bring the butterflies back home” to Port of Spain.
“I call this an act of repatriation for the butterflies, giving back what was stolen from them. We stole their native habitat,” she said. “These are all transplants, but we’re now finally honouring the beings that were here before us, and bringing them back has been a delight for us."
Hearn, with tireless assistance from the volunteers, began carving out a garden in a design inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers, which on a graph is shaped like a spiral.
The group has just been given permission by the Ministry of Agriculture to extend it and plans to do so in the coming months.
The 204-year-old Botanic Gardens, where a sugar estate once stood, is one of very few enduring landmarks in the country’s capital. It remains an escape where one can reasonably expect relative quiet and clean surroundings.
[caption id="attachment_959876" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Volunteers, led by Serina Hearn, second from right, pose in front of the cardboard boxes laid out initially to block sunlight as part of the process to renew the soil. - Photos courtesy Friends of the Botanic Gardens[/caption]
The lawns are handsomely trimmed except for an overgrown brick structure where a miniature herb garden thrived at one time.
Having started only six months ago, the butterfly garden has already started to attract onlookers, volunteers and most importantly, the treasured butterflies.
Last week, in between heavy downpours, volunteers said they observed them returning in increasing numbers.
Species of butterflies, moths and caterpillars specifically seen at the gardens are now being documented on the website at
inaturalist.org, where at least eight observations have been made thus far. Anyone is free to upload their discovery, along with
