Charlotte Rhoades Park & Butterfly Garden


Conservation and Education

The Charlotte Rhoades Park & Butterfly Garden is located on Norwood Cove at 191 Main Street, Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. It is open daily from mid-May to mid-October, from sunrise to sunset.

The Club made a donation towards the construction of a garden barn, and gives donations towards the purchase of annuals and perennials for the garden.

View NEWS & EVENTS related to: Charlotte Rhodes Park

  • In 2010 the University of Kansas MONARCHWATCH program certified Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden as an official Monarch Waystation. A Monarch Waystation is a site that provides larval and nectar sources for Monarch Butterflies.
  • Monarch caterpillar shown eating milk weed leaves.
  • Monarch chrysalis.
  • HABITAT: Open areas, meadows, fields, marshes, roadsides. LARVAL FOOD PLANTS: Milkweed. ADULT FOOD: Flower nectar of various species of milkweed and composites such as Joe-Pye weed, aster, thistle, ironweed, cosmos, goldenrod. Also mallow, lantana, buttonbush, dogbane, lilac and various species of mint.
  • Information is collected when tagged Monarchs are observed or found along their migration route and then compiled into a national database.
  • On the east coast, adults migrate 2,000 miles from Canada to Mexico to overwinter.

“Charlotte Rhoades, a resident of Southwest Harbor, owned this property in the1950’s. In 1978 the property was given to the town in her memory with the request that it be used as a quiet park for children and their parents.

The Butterfly Garden at the Charlotte Rhoades Park was established in 1998 to promote conservation education and gardening instruction in the community. Volunteers work throughout the season with school children and adults to learn more about butterfly habitat and observation. Suggestive of butterfly wings, the garden beds were designed by Bar Harbor landscape architect Bruce John Riddell and includes perennials, annuals, and shrubs that are butterfly host plants.

The Town of Southwest Harbor is grateful to the following organizations for their support of the Charlotte Rhoades Park & Butterfly Garden: the Southwest Harbor Beautification Committee, the Garden Club of Mount Desert Island, the Bar Harbor Garden Club, Friends of Acadia, Southwest Harbor Coast Guard, and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Hancock County Master Gardener Volunteers.”

—From http://www.rhoadesbutterflygarden.org/