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Andover Seed Library: A Native Transformation (on Zoom)

Known as The Monarch Gardener, Katie Banks Hone shares how she has transformed her suburban property along the Ipswich River into a thriving habitat for birds, bees and butterflies.

Katie Banks Hone shares the story of what unfolds when a native gardener inherits a typical suburban property along the Ipswich River. See non-native foundation plantings replaced by native pollinator gardens, terraced rain gardens built over eroding slopes and tour the garden rooms now filled with over 80 species of native plants, supporting birds, bees and butterflies.

Katie Hone has been gardening for her entire adult life. She is known for the riot of native flowers she planted at her Ipswich, MA property along the Ipswich River.

Katie was a 2012 recipient of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Slow the Flow G rant. This helped her transform her family's Ipswich River-front property from the traditional foundation plantings they inherited from the former owners into a haven for wildlife, while also minimizing storm runoff into the river. When she added native milkweeds to the gardens she found monarch butterfly eggs on it and began raising them with her young children. This spawned her love of monarchs, creating pollinator
gardens and educating land owners and school children on how to sustain them.

As a former Senior Aquarist and Educator at the New England Aquarium, Katie cared for hundreds of different animals including endangered piping plovers, jellyfish, Atlantic puffins and even a Nile crocodile. She also created two-story tropical waterfalls, Boston Island shorebird landscapes and brought marine biology-based education programs to schools throughout New England. Now Katie brings her knowledge of monarch butterflies and pollinator gardens to schools, garden clubs and community groups and encourages landowners and municipalities to plant milkweed.

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