If we don’t grow more milkweed, the monarch WILL go extinct🦋#garden #monarch #butterfly #milkweed

If you don't plant this in your garden this season, the monarch butterfly is in danger of extinction. And no, I'm not being dramatic. In the last 30 years, we've lost over 90% of our monarch butterfly population. And this is directly correlated to the fact that we've lost over 1 billion milkweed stems in that same time period. Every single year, the monarch butterfly migrates from Canada down to Mexico. And it relies on milkweed all along the way because. Because this is the only plant that the monarch butterfly uses as a host to lay eggs, grow monarch caterpillars and more butterflies. I heard about this crisis over 10 years ago, ran down to my local garden center and ended up causing more harm than good. I purchased tropical milkweed, which is not the type of milkweed we want to be growing. Instead, we should all be planting native milkweed. It can be known as swamp milkweed or butterfly weed. Go and check your local garden centers and see if you can find milkweed that's been grown without pesticides or herbicides. And if you can't, you can order native milkweed seeds online. These things literally grow like a weed. And if you're thinking that this one plant that you plant isn't going to make that big of a difference, you've got to know that monarch butterflies can smell milkweed from miles away. Just imagine the difference we could make if we all planted a little bit of native milkweed this season.