photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

About 20 people turned out to lend a hand with a student-led project at Haskell Indian Nations University Saturday — planting a monarch butterfly garden.

Visitors at Haskell Indian Nations University on Saturday morning might have come across a group working diligently to plant a garden — specifically, one meant to attract monarch butterflies.

About 20 people were lending a hand with the effort Saturday morning. Dori Summers, a Haskell senior from St. Marys studying environmental science, led the project. It was a good turnout, Summers said. Thanks to that, she expected they’d be done with their work pretty quickly, save for shoveling the dirt that had become heavier as a result of Friday night’s storms.

Earlier in April, Summers spoke with the Journal-World and explained how the project came to be.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Dori Summers, pictured in the center of the group with the yellow-handled shovel, led the project. Summers is a senior at Haskell studying environmental science.

Summers is employed by Haskell’s greenhouse, and her position is funded by a United States Department of Agriculture Sustainability Grant. Under the grant, Summers said students are allowed to take the initiative and pursue research or sustainability projects if they see a need on campus.

For Summers, the need for the project she chose arose after she attended a Monarch Watch butterfly tagging event. Monarch Watch is a program devoted to the study of the annual North American migration of the monarch butterfly and is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

At the event, Summers learned how the monarch population is declining, and how the program donates milkweed plants — which serve as the monarch larvae’s food source — to anyone who wants to plant them.

She also learned about one of Monarch Watch’s initiatives — inviting supporters to go a step further and plant “monarch waystations,” full pollinator habitats populated in part by those milkweed plants.

“I was like ‘Oh, we have so much room right next to the greenhouse,'” Summers said. “I thought, why don’t we start a butterfly garden?”

But those waystations must include other prairie plants as well, so Summers said she tilled the land where the garden now exists in advance and threw down some seeds donated by the lab she works in at the University of Kansas, plus some she purchased at the Kaw Valley Seed Fair.

Summers had also been growing milkweeds and other prairie plants in the Haskell greenhouse in preparation for Saturday’s planting event.

“It’s really nice, because the community is now contributing to this,” Summers said. “And I didn’t want the project to die after I left, because I’m graduating. This is a really, really beautiful thing; it’ll be really good for pollinators, it’s right next to our vegetable garden. I really wanted all of campus to get involved, to be a part of this really neat and beautiful project.”

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Volunteers worked to help plant a pollinator garden on Haskell’s campus Saturday.

It’s also something more community members than just Haskell’s students can enjoy, Summers said. Passersby visiting campus will have something nice to look at, and some might even stop and learn more about pollinators along their way. She said once the planting is finished, the plan is to erect some fencing and signage explaining the garden’s purpose.

Haskell’s graduation is only a few weeks away on May 13, and Summers said it’s likely she’ll be moving on to a graduate program next. If not that, she said there are also plenty of jobs in the area related to the environment that she could pursue. She said her long-term goal is to go into research about the restoration of natural areas like prairies.