In 2000 Jane Lou Heard was diagnosed with cancer and 2 yrs later she’d close her precious room, and in her final Heard’s Country Garden Newsletter she wrote. “However you will find still a lot more gardens in my heat that have to be planted – your body is contacting for a rest. Expressing good-bye could be the hardest thing I experienced to do.”

For anyone folks who’d the delight of understanding Mary Lou Heard, that memorial garden tour keeps a unique place in our hearts. And for me personally, it’s particularly significant, since it absolutely was at Heards Country Gardens Nursery, where I found my passion, butterfly gardening! Instantly upon joining a butterfly garden type at the nursery, I was forever obsessed with butterflies.

I was so fascinated with every detail of the butterfly class, taking notes and asking questions, that I could not wait to obtain house and begin “garden for the main benefit of butterflies” myself.
I particularly remembered waiting in range to purchase a chrysalis from the instructor, Cathy, the “Butterfly Lady”, but to my frustration, by the full time I built my way to the leading of the point, Cathy was out of butterfly chrysalises garden lights

She did however have several caterpillars, and upon showing her I was growing pesticide free fennel within my garden , she sold me among her Anise Swallowtail caterpillars. I extremely carefully took it home, fed it, fretted over it, till finally that memorable day came when my Anise Swallowtail Butterfly surfaced from it’s chrysalis, I knew I was hooked.

That story delivers me to share with you about one of the gardens on the Linda Lou Seen Memorial Garden Visit, it’s at the home of Helen and Ken Wood. The “Wood’s Wildlife Wonder” is filled with crops and woods picked to entice butterflies and hummingbirds. Helen is just a master gardener, her garden is authorized as a North American Butterfly Association authorized butterfly garden , Monarch Way-station and Indigenous Habitat.