My New Favorite Butterfly Garden

October 13th, 2020

   Even at big public gardens, butterfly gardens tend to be fairly small, blending into the crowd of different themes.

Looking back over one of the ponds in the Holden Butterfly Garden at the visitor center.

   I’ve never seen one with enough wow power to really stand out… certainly not to the point where I left judging a butterfly garden as the best feature in the whole place.

   Then I saw Holden Arboretum’s butterfly garden for the first time early this month.

   Holden Arboretum spans two counties in northeastern Ohio, about a half-hour drive from Cleveland. It’s a sister to the Cleveland Botanical Garden and covers 3,500 acres, although “only” about 200 acres are in cultivated gardens and collections.

   I had heard that Holden was big into rhododendrons and had an interesting canopy walk that runs about 500 feet long through the treetops about 65 feet off the ground.

   There was a Holden Butterfly Garden listed on the map behind the visitor’s center, but even the arboretum’s website didn’t hint at the scope of what was back there.

   Assuming it to be another smallish wildflower collection that was probably well past peak by now, my wife and I skipped it and headed first to the “main attractions” – i.e. the trees, the trails, the canopy walk, the fall displays, the Stickworks willow-sculpture special exhibit, and some really scenic lake views.

   It was a very nice arboretum – better than I was expecting – and no doubt is particularly stunning when the thousands of rhododendrons bloom in May.

   As we were wrapping up the visit, I poked behind the visitor center to see what was left of the season’s butterfly plants.

   “What was left” turned out to be the arboretum’s best feature and the biggest, most amazing butterfly garden I’ve ever seen.

   Two ponds – each about the size of Little League baseball fields – dominate the view with a bridge running down the middle and leading into the flower beds.

Holden’s second pond features a spouting fountain in the center.

   The pond at left is filled with lily pads, adorned with boulders, and accented with a waterfall that cascades and drops down the far end at the foot of a mature conifer (a cedar?)

   The pond at right has a large spraying fountain in the center and is ringed with grasses, cattails, and all sorts of pollinator plants.

   I don’t know if this was the design idea or not, but the dual ponds reminded me of two butterfly wings fanning out from a butterfly’s body (represented by the bridge in the middle).

   A lot of the perennials were bloomed out for the season, but enough pre-frost action was still going on that this garden was far from “done.”

   That’s one hallmark of a functional pollinator garden, of course… giving a wire-to-wire buffet of butterfly benefits from the host-plant foliage of spicebushes and milkweeds early in the season to the last of the goldenrods, asters, and perennial sunflowers in fall.

Some of Holden’s butterfly beds.

   People who demand color in all of their display gardens wouldn’t be disappointed here in October, although arboretum volunteers say the Holden Butterfly Garden — completed in 2002 — is at its best in July and August.

   When you cross the bridge, grass paths shoot out in both directions to take you through curving beds filled with mostly native perennials and grasses and enough shrubs, evergreens, and small trees to make the design more diverse than a meadow.

   The route I liked best was the left path, which loops you around behind the left pond and back over another bridge. That bridge dumps you out onto a large wooden deck covered by a pergola and a bench that’s big enough to seat at least 10 or 12 people.

   From there, the view is directly across the lily pads and into the waterfall with the butterfly plantings as the backdrop. It was a gorgeous view that we were lucky enough to see when the clouds broke to reveal a blue autumn sky.

The view of the waterfall from the pergola.

   The plants are labeled if you’re there to study and get ideas as well as ogle.

   But even for non-gardeners, this space has to be a place where you sit and think, “Aren’t plants a good thing to have around?”

   If you’re ever in the Cleveland area, which is about 265 miles or a five-hour drive from Harrisburg, give Holden a look. There’s plenty to see.

   The arboretum is open Tuesdays through Sundays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 9550 Sperry Road, Kirtland, Ohio. Tickets are $15 for adults.

   Just don’t forget to look behind that visitor center.

   The Cleveland Botanical Garden is also well worth a visit in east Cleveland’s cultural district, between Case Western Reserve’s School of Law and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

   It features a soothing, wooded Waterfall Garden, extensive herb gardens, a children’s garden with treehouse, and a sparkling glasshouse with both desert and cloud-forest environments.

   And while you’re there, check out the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, which are a string of 33 gardens along Rockefeller Park, each dedicated to a country/culture that factors into Cleveland’s heritage (i.e. Irish Garden, Hungarian Garden, Italian Garden).