Teidagua Builds Butterfly Garden at WWTP for Pollinators
Teidagua volunteers, in collaboration with Veolia Cares, established a 25-square-meter native plant Butterfly Garden at the Punta del Hidalgo Wastewater Treatment Plant in La Laguna to protect pollinators and enhance biodiversity, already attracting Monarch butterflies.
A Butterfly Garden is an area with specific plants and flowers, carefully designed to give butterflies a good place to live and complete their life cycle. Butterflies are vital for nature; they help pollinate plants and are a crucial part of the food chain. Sadly, their numbers are falling globally.
To help address this decline, Teidagua, working with the Veolia Cares program, organized a special environmental volunteering day. Their goal was to protect these important pollinators by creating a Butterfly Garden. This new garden is located near the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Punta del Hidalgo, La Laguna.
This effort helps protect biodiversity by encouraging more pollinators to thrive. Supporting pollinators is a key part of conservation plans both nationally and internationally. It's also part of Teidagua's bigger project to make their facilities more natural and wildlife-friendly.
On November 10th, a team of Teidagua volunteers designed and built the Butterfly Garden. It covers about 25 square meters, and they carefully planted only native species, making sure no invasive plants were used, Teidagua reported.
They planted about two of each of these species: sage, asteriscus, asclepias, rock bush, tasaigo, incienso, tamarisk, oleander, bitter tabaiba, red tabaiba, sweet tabaiba, sea lettuce, sea parsley, leña buena, lavender, sea grape, and duranta. Each plant has a small tile sign to identify it. The garden is also close to a recently opened pond, which Teidagua naturalized and fills with recycled water.
Teidagua explained the main idea: "It's about creating a place with plants and flowers where butterflies can visit, feed, and complete their whole life cycle. For instance, a Monarch butterfly lays its eggs on a plant. Caterpillars hatch, eat the plant, form a chrysalis, and then emerge as butterflies. And the butterflies born here tend to return to the same spot."
In fact, since the garden was created, the first Monarch butterflies have already arrived. They've laid their eggs on the asclepias plants, and the first caterpillars, which only eat this plant, have already hatched.
The project also aims to create areas rich in biodiversity that don't need much upkeep. Another goal is to replace thirsty lawns with plants that benefit local wildlife. Teidagua added that they also want to raise awareness about how crucial plants are as the foundation of all biodiversity.
The Punta del Hidalgo WWTP is becoming a key site for biodiversity projects by Teidagua and Veolia. It already hosts initiatives like bird watching and the new pond, and now, the Butterfly Garden.
Teidagua emphasized that this coastal town is in a special location, right next to the Anaga Rural Park. The WWTP itself has a history of supporting biodiversity.