Monarch Butterfly Celebration and Release

Name: Monarch Butterfly Celebration and Release
Start: 2025-09-12T17:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-09-12T19:30:00-04:00
Location: City of Charleston Spring Hill Cemetery

Schedule

Fri Sep 12 2025 at 05:30 pm to 07:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

City of Charleston Spring Hill Cemetery | Charleston, WV

An educational evening, explore the butterfly garden and nature trail, kids activities that highlight stewardship of the environment. A Monarch Butterfly release will take place at 7pm. This is the 21st year anniversary of West Virginia Monarch Butterfly Day and we will be celebrating with its founder.
- Heather Tokas is an award winning butterfly educator and entrepreneur, owner of Butterflies from Heather. In 2004, she founded, West Virginia Monarch Butterfly Day, which is observed every year on Sept. 12th, through legislation (HCR28), sponsored by 5 senators and 7 delegates. She will be on hand with butterfly information and projects and do a monarch butterfly release at 7pm.
- Chris Higgins, from the Ratrie Arboretum at Spring Hill Cemetery Park will be on hand to answer questions about the butterfly garden, plants to benefit pollinators and land management practices at Spring Hill.
- Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery Park and Arboretum will be available to inform you about the Cemetery and explain their role in beautification projects.
The monarch was adopted as West Virginia’s official state butterfly in 1995. The legislative resolution noted that the monarch is “one of the most beautiful butterflies in the region” and “exists in abundance in West Virginia.”
Fast Forward to December 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that “adding the monarch butterfly to the list of threatened and endangered species is warranted” – but was not listed because the agency had too few resources to cover too many other high-priority needs.
The Noah Jarrell Monarch waystation at Spring Hill is a perennial and annual flower garden planted with plants that host and feed butterflies. It is named for Noah Jarrell, a student who was instrumental in petitioning the City of Charleston to establish a waystation. It was started at Spring Hill in 2022. Conservation Corner adjacent to the garden is a wild area of open meadow, with some additional shrub and tree plantings; many of which are host plants for butterflies. A short, mulched Nature Trail winds through it.
The event will take place around the Butterfly Garden located on Sunset Drive. It is recommended that you come up to Spring Hill Cemetery from Piedmont Road onto Farnsworth Drive. Signs will take you from the red brick Administration Building, along Middleton Drive to a gravel Parking Lot (short walk), or to the Butterfly Garden, where there is limited parking.
As you drive along Middleton look on your left for a large Celtic Cross on your left beyond Lucas Drive, dedicated to the memory of William Henry Edwards (1822 –1909). Edwards came to West Virginia and opened some of the earliest mines in the southern part of the state. He was also a prominent naturalist specializing in the study of butterflies. He wrote The Butterflies of North America, a three-volume treatise that is still highly regarded and used today for its scholarship and the quality of its illustrations. His daughter and family are buried in the plot.
Spring Hill Cemetery Park and Arboretum, Spring Hill Cemetery Park occupies 182 acres of a hilltop less than a mile from the heart of downtown Charleston. Officially established as the municipal cemetery in 1869 it is the final resting place for many of the prominent early settlers of Charleston and the Kanawha Valley.
Events:
Monday @9am: Walking Tour with a view – History and Flora, except Sept. 1st (Labor Day), Sept. 29th, Oct.13th up to and including October 29th.
Tuesday @5.30pm: Cemetery Walking and Running Group Thursday July 24th, August 14th and 28th, 6-8pm: Headstone Cleaning
Friday Sept. 12th, 5.30-7.30pm: Monarch Butterfly Celebration and Release
Sunday Oct.12th, 1-4pm:Founders, Feathers and Flora – Re-enactors and more
Sunday Oct.26th, 2pm: 5M Trail Race and Hike
More:
https://www.springhillcemeterycharleston.com/
https://www.ratriearboretum.com/
Sponsored by Spring Hill Cemetery Commission