Here at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, we’ve been talking a lot about how we define success.

Is it by the number of stroller-pushing moms with toddlers in the Children’s Garden?  By the number of new households enrolling Garden memberships?  Is it success that we have extended Flowers After Five through October, because so many folks enjoy seeing the Garden in evening twilight?  How many visitors have discovered the Garden because we’ve granted free admission—is that a measure of our success?  In the non-profit world, we certainly care (and worry about!) the bottom line, but there are many ways of measuring our achievements, and data alone is only part of the picture of success.

So how does this relate to my recent obsession about Monarch caterpillars? Well, the data was not looking very good.  The Asclepias physocarpus ‘Oscar’ was proving to be a great host plant in my garden, but over two weeks practically every caterpillar became a statistic as birds plucked them off for dinner.  Even the protective tree netting that I had used to cover the milkweed plants didn’t stop the feeding frenzy.  So I cut stems of milkweed and with a few intrepid caterpillars clinging for life, I brought the whole business inside. 

Over the past week, I’ve checked several times a day on three very hungry caterpillars, bringing in extra milkweed and misting the leaves occasionally so that they stay tender.  Around the planter where the stems are lodged in floral foam and kept moist with daily watering, bits of frass (caterpillar poop) indicate that the caterpillars are well nourished.  So why, yesterday morning, was I able to find only two of the three critters?  By last evening, the answer was spectacularly clear!

I have a chrysalis! About the size of a peanut, glistening pale green, with a string of tiny gold “beads” adorning it, the chrysalis is attached to a milkweed leaf, near the bottom of the planter.  If all goes well, by next weekend a Monarch butterfly should emerge.

But what if it doesn’t, for some reason?  Will I have failed?  I don’t think so—the discovery of this chrysalis lifted my heart and gave me an up-close glimpse of one of nature’s many small, but sublime miracles. 

How do you define success in your garden? Overcoming aphids? An abundance of arugula? Is it the number of quarts of tomato sauce, or the memory of the taste of a sun-ripened cherry tomato? 

Randee Humphrey is education manager at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
http://www.lewisginter.org

My garden provides string beans, chives, chard etc. which I joyfully eat raw shortly after harvest.
My garden teaches me how to work with nature; rather than using chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  One lesson was that the small white coccons found on the same kale leaf as cutworms should be protected. These small coccons contain parasitic flies which will eat the cutworms.
My garden provides inspiration for my own gardening blog.

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