Butterflies are beautiful, flying insects with large scaly wings. The monarch butterfly is a common poisonous butterfly that eats poisonous milkweed in its larval stage and lays its eggs on the milkweed plant. 

But when avid gardener Mary Mackenzie read about the decline of the population of monarch butterflies, she knew she wanted to do whatever she can help.

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Mary Mackenzie has been planting flowers and vegetables at her condominium with little space available. She's a volunteer in a local gardening park and in the city of Pinellas Park.

"I was hearing more and more about the monarch butterflies declination, they're so distressed that they're becoming endangered," she said.

According to TBNweekly.com, Mary Mackenzie decided a year ago to take her interest in gardening and preservation a step further. So, she began planting milkweed and other flowers that would attract monarch butterflies. She planted 300 milkweed bushes, primarily in Clearwater and Pinellas Park.

Mackenzie said that several years ago, the city was forced to cut back on landscaping due to the recession to save money. She added that the landscaping was really going downhill. That's the reason why she volunteered to maintain the Clock Tower Park.

Fortunately, over the past year, Mackenzie already achieved her goal, she transformed that Clock Tower Park into a butterfly garden by planting 100 milkweed bushes. Luckily, planting a milkweed doesn't cost her that much, she said, "Once you get a few bushes started you can get more seeds or take cuttings."

She encouraged some of her friends and neighbors to plant on their own by handing them out seeds and cuttings.

Her goal is to educate people; she spoke with her neighbors one by one and encouraged them that caterpillars are good for their community. For her, small things can make a ripple effect.

Mackenzie knows that her work isn't done yet, TBNweekly.com reports that over the Fourth of July weekend, she visited the ButterflyWorkz Butterfly Farm in Dunnellon.

She said that she want to learn as much as she can from the monarch butterflies. She also wants to see how they're doing and see what she could be doing.

Another butterfly saver who was a Mercer county farm boy named Ron Richael, now 63, who captured his very first butterflies more than 50 years ago, has gotten inspiration and knowledge about monarch butterflies that made him write a book. It's a how-to book that will teach one how to attract butterflies in one's own backyard.

Richael said that he wrote a book based on what he has learned for the past years in order to inspire more people to garden for butterflies, especially monarch butterflies, whose population has decreased because of the use of agricultural herbicides and pesticides throughout their habitat, SharonHerald has learned.

According to Care2, gardening for butterflies is not that hard at all; the important thing that one needs to remember is that one has to select plants that are native in his or her region.

Monarch butterflies are attracted to milkweed, and they need it to survive because it's where they host much of their life cycle. Hence, if one wishes to help save the monarch butterflies, Richael advised that he or she should plant milkweed.

Moreover, though attracting monarch butterflies and saving their population are very challenging, gardening for butterflies lets one connect to the nature in spectacular ways.

TagsMonarch Butterflies, Endagered Species