Skip to main content

Colusa High School Graduate Plans a Monarch Habitat

May contain: furniture, table, desk, person, human, electronics, monitor, display, screen, computer, keyboard, hardware, computer hardware, and computer keyboard

Xerces Society is providing 1600 perennial pollinator plants for three projects in Colusa County.  Heartleaf and Narrow-leaf milkweed (Asclepias speciose, Asclepias fascicularis) will be two of the species in the “Pollinator Kit” along with Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa), California Goldenrod (Solidago velutina ssp. californica), Pacific Aster (Symphyotrichum chilense), and Western Vervain (Verbena lasiostachys).   Hedgerow Farms is propagating the plant plugs for transplanting in late fall 2019. Colusa High School Graduate, Chloe Ferraiolo, spent her senior project focused on promoting and planting habitat for the declining monarch population.  Chloe came into the CCRCD office and applied for the Xerces’ Pollinator Kit in hopes that creating monarch habitats would continue in Colusa County long after her senior project ended. Her application was awarded and will be one planting site of three in the county.  Chloe’s vision was to see monarch and pollinator species planted within the Oak Woodland Demonstration Site at the County Office of Education in Williams as apart of the Farm to School project.   The other two projects will be farm plantings to bolster pollinator habitat in an almond orchard and row crop field.  We will keep you posted throughout the projects.  If you are interested in learning more about what to plant to enhance monarch and pollinator habitat, Xerces’ has a wonderful publication: Inland Monarch Plant List.