Monarch Education Project: Raising Awareness and Action

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In May of 2024, I wrote Collaborating to Support Monarch Butterflies to share how The School Garden Doctor first got involved with monarch education. Although I had been growing milkweed in my own backyard and supporting overall pollinator education for more than a decade, our organization did not have a specific effort dedicated to monarch butterflies until 2023.

The longer we worked with our community partners on this issue, the more deeply involved I became in understanding monarch population decline and the actions we can take to address it. Along with some of these partners, I joined the Western Monarch Count as a volunteer community scientist. Then, in January of 2025, I started Speaking Up for Monarchs. And while some of our partner organizations were losing funding from cuts to federal science spending, we wrote grants.

Through several grant-funded efforts, we are addressing the steep decline of the western monarch butterfly population and amplifying awareness of the monarch’s cultural significance. 

We are so grateful for support from our local chapter of the California Native Plant Society, who helped us secure $5,270 from two funds administered Napa Valley Community Foundation. We will install three additional native habitat gardens between Westwood Hills Park Pollinator Garden and Becky’s Butterfly Garden at Skyline Park. We were also fortunate to receive $5,000 from the competitive Lewis Cellars Community Grant Program to develop another three sites. Finally, Community Projects gifted $1,500 to amply our outreach with signs and integrated art lessons.

Thanks to this influx of funding, we are continuing the Monarch Education Project! In tandem with our other programs–Dirt Girls, Napa School Gardens, and School Site Lesson Planning–we will maintain and expand the reach of our collective efforts.

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Project Components

• Monarch Waystations: Establish six (6) sites along a four-mile path between Westwood Hills and Skyline Park and register existing habitats with the national conservation organization, Monarch Watch.
• Professional Learning: Engage local educators in a professional learning opportunity to implement scientifically accurate and culturally-relevant science and art lessons. 
• Art Integration: Commission a local artist to create bilingual signs to place in publicly accessible gardens and pilot art lessons in twelve (12) classrooms. 
• Community Engagement: Recruit local residents to participate in the Western Monarch Count and become Monarch Ambassadors.

One of the components of the Monarch Education Project is to host a professional learning opportunity for educators. We hosted an inaugural Teacher Workshop with our longtime partner, Napa RCD. On a cool spring morning in April, about a dozen of us gathered in the Martha Walker Native Habitat Garden at Skyline Park to deepen our understanding of the threats facing the monarch butterfly and actions students can take to address these threats. The fall Teacher Workshop is tentatively scheduled for October 4th.

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As we transition from summer to fall, it’s peak monarch sighting season in Napa County. When daylight hours wane, it signals to the monarchs to make their way back to the central coast where they will overwinter. I spied a few larvae in my backyard in July and received photos and updates from friends who also saw monarchs recently. Then just last week, I spotted adult monarchs flitting around two days in a row. The first was in a school garden where we’ll host Dirt Girl this fall. The next day I saw one visiting the milkweed in my backyard.

Have you had any monarch sightings this summer? Migrate to First Thursdays on September 4th between 5-9 pm at the Oxbow Commons to tell us about them.