Hallberg Butterfly Garden in Sebastopol

After wandering down a long gravel driveway, passing rows of apple trees, and a parked Airstream trailer overflowing with makeshift tables of plant starts, I found the archway of Dutchman’s Pipevine that led to Louise Hallberg’s house. The house she has lived her whole life. The periwinkle and pale yellow Victorian was surrounded by clusters of greenery and bursts of wildflowers and their respective seedpods. When Louise came out to the porch, carrying a chart of butterflies, she went right into describing each plant and why they were growing in her little piece of paradise.

“Mother planted these in 1920,” began Louise, pointing to the trellised Dutchman’s Pipevine that led from the front to the side of her childhood home. Louise is now in her 90s, but she has a youthful excitement and is brimming with hard-earned knowledge about the verdant menagerie that makes up the intentional ecosystem on her property. The Dutchman’s Pipevine is the centerpiece of the Hallberg Gardens—host to the rare Dutchman’s swallowtail, a glorious turquoise-winged butterfly that hatches here in the mid-spring. This butterfly is the apple of Louise’s eye.

This little piece of Sonoma, hinged between the outskirts of Sevastopol and the tiny village of Graton, is planted with both host plants and nectar plants that attract a wide variety of local butterflies, and also birds. Louise, like her mother before her, is endlessly fascinated with the relationship between the different species of flora and fauna, and has cultivated and maintained a place where butterflies can really call home.

Louise led my friend Charmaine and I down a woodsy path to the back of the house where rare camelias and grape-y wisteria vines were intermixed with the underdogs of the local botanical world: plantain grass; goldenrod; evening primrose. Some of these are pulled as weeds in other Sonoma gardens, but here plantain grass is left to attract the stately Admiral butterfly; goldenrod is trimmed back each year so it grows anew, providing sweet nectar for many species of butterfly.

In addition to the spacious kitchen garden, there are areas designed for dragonflies, complete with a pond, and fallen trees that create a community for woodpeckers, and a bare-topped redwood tree where Louise pointed out to me a Great Horned Owl. Another treasure on the upper garden is a tree grown from the cutting of the now-dead tree under which Luther Burbank was buried.

After Louise showed us around, she introduced us to one of her volunteers who was busy trimming back invasive vinca and then to some fellow Graton Community Club members who were busily planting thyme for the upcoming plant sale.  (Louise has the longest-running membership in the club’s history).  Everyone there was basking in the beauty and liveliness of this lush patch of land. But Louise also had some tough news to share: last year she only found seven Dutchman’s swallowtail chrysalis and just a decade ago there were thousands. She wasn’t sure exactly what the factors were.  All the surrounding land that is used for agriculture is organic and pesticide free, but changes in the weather pattern, air quality and habitat reduction in other parts of the state could contribute to the declining numbers.

The good news is that Hallberg Gardens are protected as a designated habitat and there is a non-profit organization for which you can volunteer or donate that helps Louise maintain this special place. You can visit by calling her in advance to set up a tour or coming to the annual Open Garden held the third Sunday of June each year (this year it lands on the 26th).  Also, you can educate yourself about host and nectar plants you can grown in your own back yard, or simply stop treating them as weeds, like the common plantain grass. As she puts it, “It is my fervent wish to enhance and preserve the Hallberg Butterfly Gardens so that future generations will always have the opportunity to behold the beauty of nature’s wonderful miracle – the butterfly.“

Good Idea

Plant a butterfly habitat. Let one thrive on your lawn or window box. Learn more about what native plants attract the birds and bees and butterflies. Find more information on this site, and also find a list of common nectar plants (those that attract adult butterflies) here, and a list of common host plants (those that attract caterpillars) here.

Deets

Hallberg Butterfly Gardens, 8687 Oak Grove Avenue , Sebastopol (you can also send donations to this address), call 707.829.9440 to make an appointment or to volunteer, and come out this June 26th for Open Gardens.