Saugus Garden Club maintains bird bath, butterfly garden in Breakheart

SAUGUS – The Garden Club is all about giving back to the community and that includes the beauties and the beasts, of sorts.Over the last few years the Garden Club has quietly created and maintained a butterfly garden behind the Christopher Dunne Visitors Center in Breakheart Reservation. Now the group has added a birdbath to the mix.Garden Club member Martha Clouse, who heads up the Butterfly Garden Maintenance committee, said the club has been working on the butterfly garden for nearly three years with plants largely from their own gardens.The group started by clearing a spot just beyond the stonewall, which is just beyond the deck that wraps around the backside of the visitors center.”We cleared the space and put in our own bird feeders,” she said.Clouse said the project was in part an extension of its flowers, fauna and science education program.Crowded with day lilies, coreopsis and a variety of other flowers, including, of course, a butterfly bush, the garden was growing but it still needed something. Clouse said last year the club voted to add a birdbath but it didn’t want the typical pedestal and bowl. Instead, she said, they brought in a slab with a bowl carved into it.”It was better for the site,” she said. “We wanted it as natural looking as possible.”To add to the nature theme of the nature reserve, Clouse said the club also decided to help out in covering the concrete piers that hold up the deck’s handicap ramp.”We put in giant hostas around the corners and down the edges so when they grow up you won’t be able to see the concrete,” she said.With a couple of small tables and deck chairs, Clouse said the deck area is perfect for sitting and watching butterflies in the garden or birds in the bath.Clouse said the club also created a poster to be hung designating the area an official butterfly garden and they donated a children’s book to the nature library inside as well.”We’re looking to get the plants labeled with permanent labels,” she added. “We’re working with DCR (the Department of Conservation and Recreation) to get them, we’re hoping for spring.While the garden remains on DCR property Clouse said the club will continue to maintain it.”We will check in regularly and report any problems to DCR,” she said. “We weed and make sure the birdbath is full, that kind of thing . . . it really is just a beautiful, beautiful part of Saugus.”