Pampering for High Flyers

Inn by The Sea creates a memorable and exclusive guest experience, but underscores  properties commitment to sustainability.

Gardens around hotels and restaurants add tremendous curb appeal and can enhance the guest experience as well as increase the bottom line.  With a little thought, gardens can be both attractive to visitors and sustain local eco systems. Inn by the Sea, an inviting beach resort for both butterflies and people just seven miles south of Portland, makes the comfort of their guests, which includes the endangered Monarch, a priority.   The Inn is a designated Butterfly Waystation, offering butterflies as well as the inn’s more traditional two legged guests, luxurious seaside accommodation and delectable local fare.

As a certified Maine DEP Environmental Leader, celebrating all things Maine, including the preservation of the Monarch butterfly, is very much a part of the guests’ stay at the Inn. An array of blooming nectar plants, milkweed and butterfly hotel have all been added to the inn’s largely indigenous landscape to attract and sustain butterflies by head gardener Derrick Daly. Monarch Watch, which registers properties that provide food and shelter for the endangered Monarch as they migrate through North America, certified the inn as a Butterfly Waystation.

“Developing sustainable management practices for the little piece of the earth for which we are responsible is really an acknowledgment of being part of something that’s much bigger. It’s a connection to the natural world around us, and helps preserve the beauty of our coastal landscape for our guests, staff, community and the future,” said Daly.

According to Daly, reducing a garden’s environmental impact begins with rich native compost, the predominant use of a variety of indigenous plants, and choosing plant material that provides habitat and food for local wildlife.

Located on Crescent Beach and adjacent to a bird sanctuary, Inn by the Sea has long had a relationship with butterflies- Daly’s nectar gardens are a bloom with Monarchs and other butterflies  summer through late fall. “Having butterflies on property adds a little enchantment to a guest’s visit to coastal Maine. It can mean the difference between a good guest experience and creating a loyal guest,” says Daly.

Daly teaches a popular “Bug’s Life” summer program for kids around the nectar gardens.  Children create their own bug costumes and learn about eco systems from a bug’s viewpoint.  They visit the butterfly house, view the fat yellow and black larvae on milkweed plants and learn how to create a butterfly waystation at home.  Daly plants fennel and dill in the inn’s on site vegetable garden and has successfully attracted the graceful Black Swallowtail butterfly to the seaside property as well.

Adult guests enjoy weekly garden tours as well as seminars on “How to Plant for Wildlife”- learning how to plant beautiful gardens that also generate food and shelter for wildlife.  In their holistic approach to eco sensitive hospitality, the Inn’s sheet and towel reuse program donates savings to agencies that help protect endangered butterflies.

Creating a waystation for the endangered Monarch is easy according to Daly:

• Amend existing soil with rich, locally produced organic compost, to provide the perfect growing medium for plants, while eliminating need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
• Choose native plants that provide food and shelter for butterflies and their young. It is necessary to plant milkweed for Monarchs as it is the only plant on which the butterfly can lay its eggs. Milkweed both feeds and protects the larvae as it is slightly poisonous to the butterfly’s natural predators.
• Let milkweed thrive if it ‘self’ seeds,  or contact www.Monarchwatch.org/ws for milkweed seeds
• Use Native Nectar Perennials:  Echinacea or Purple Cone Flower, Asecplias or Butterfly Weed, Solidago or Golden Rod,  New England Purple Aster, Vernonia or Iron Weed,  Eupatorium or Joe Pye Weed, Veronicastrum or Culver’s Root,  Rudbeckia Herbsonne
• Daly’s butterfly garden includes a few non indigenous, non invasive annuals in containers that are rich in nectar to provide a good food source for the hatching larvae:  Snapdragons, Verbenia Bonairensis Cosmos Clemoe and Red Profussion series Zinnia- a butterfly favorite.
• Butterflies need a water source- either a moist area in the garden or a shallow dish
• No chemicals or pesticides, and native plants require less water.

“Bird houses and feeding and nesting stations add life, fun and texture to a property while eliminating the need to spray for insects, which is also much healthier for people,” says Daly. “Planting a native tree and having a bird build a nest, or a butterfly find shelter in a branch is magical- it helps define the sense of place, completes the picture for our guests, and it’s all better for the environment- who can argue with that?”

Written by: Rauni Kew, Public Relations Manager – www.innbythesea.com