The Monarch Wishing Tree

Western Monarch butterflies are in peril. Western Monarch populations have dropped 97 percent below their historic average between the 1980’s and the mid 2010’s. In July of 2022 the butterfly was declared an Endangered Species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Gardeners play an important role in their possible recovery.

Building on other efforts, including a Free Milkweed Exchange, in the spring of 2022 Roger’s Gardens launched a Monarch Wishing Tree to both further highlight the role that gardeners play in this iconic butterfly’s recovery and to raise needed funds for additional research and conservation.

The Wishing Tree was located in the middle of the garden center and seen by tens of thousands of shoppers and visitors. Requesting a $5 donation, small wooden life-size Monarch butterflies were added to the tree. Each orange butterfly included a handwritten “wish” and was added to the others on the tree, creating quite a show.

The Wishing tree, now filled with over a thousand Monarchs and Monarch wishes continues and, like Monarchs returning to their overwintering trees, will be on display throughout the winter.

Informational signage and literature are all a part of the display and informs visitors of the monarch’s life cycle, its relationship with locally native species of milkweed, and what gardeners can do to assist in their recovery.

Thank you to all of our guests and visitors who hung a butterfly and made a donation. Over $6,000 was raised in 2022 and donated to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a leading science-based organization engaged in Monarch conservation and conducting original research to guide those conservation efforts.