Charlotte County’s Talented and Gifted (TAG) students recently created a butterfly garden at Central Middle School as a hands-on component about pollinators and butterflies for their six-week project.

TAG Group Leader Jennifer Grey said she is proud of the hard work displayed by the students throughout the project, and the students were excited from start to finish. 

“The butterfly garden at CMS was a wonderful project,” said Division Superintendent Nancy Leonard. “It was a great learning experience for the children and it was so nice to have the community and interagency involvement.”

Leonard said assistance was received from Julie Hamlett and Tricia May with the Southside Soil and Water Conservation District (SSWCD), as well as Bob Jones, extension agent and SSWCD Director.

“It is always so good to have their involvement because the children love the hands-on learning opportunities especially with these experts,” Leonard said.

As SSWCD’s education coordinator, Hamlett said she offered the idea to start the butterfly garden as a kickoff to the Stewardship Virginia Campaign.

“It was a pleasure to be a part of a program to help the students learn more about the environment and the importance of pollinators to our society. The students not only learned how to work as a group to make decisions, (but) they learned how to plan a project and see it come to fruition.”

The Stewardship Virginia Campaign is a statewide initiative to Virginia’s natural resources through volunteer work, according to the governor’s office.

The campaign runs until May 31.

Hamlett said the mulch for the project was donated by Tucker Timber in Keysville. She said by converting a non-native landscape with native plants, the garden will provide nectar and pollen sources for a variety of butterfiles, moths, bees, wasps and hummingbirds.