Two former Malibu residents devoting time and energy to protect and grow the local butterfly population
American songstress and enduring personality Dolly Parton once wrote, “Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.” Parton, along with many people are enamored with the winged creatures. Now, a former Malibu couple is devoting their time to creating a welcoming habitat for the beautiful insects and essential pollinators.
Laura Ford and her husband live in Laguna Beach, but are driving up the coast to Malibu most weekends, where they’rein the final stages of completing a monarch butterfly and pollinator garden at Legacy Park.
The couple, from England and Canada, spent a lot of time outdoors when they lived in Malibu a few years ago. With the climate so different from their home countries, they spent hours here hiking, soaking up the sun, and even doing beach cleanups. Ford recalled her elation at seeing a hummingbird in person for the first time in Malibu. “I must have looked like a crazy person because I was practically hopping up and down because I hadn’t ever seen one, only on nature shows,” she said.
A nature enthusiast, the 37-year-old started a nonprofit in 2021, Pollinator Protection Fund (PPF). It supports monarch butterflies “because they are having a really tough time surviving, finding places to feed, and finding places to breathe,” according to Ford, whose group is creating butterfly gardens up and down the coast with three in Laguna Beach public parks, several in Newport Beach, and one in La Jolla.
When the nonprofit received a grant from the Forest Service and the charity Monarch Joint Venture, it partnered to bring a butterfly pollinator garden here in Malibu “because that’s where we began,” Ford said.
“I love the fact that in Malibu the wild area has been preserved, that you have the bluffs, you have places where people can walk and hike and there’s also Monarch wintering areas,” she continued. “They’re degraded, but they are areas Monarchs traditionally migrate to from as far north as Canada all the way to Malibu during the winter. I wanted to create a garden so I wrote to the city of Malibu and said I was awarded a grant and I can make a garden for you for free.”
PPF is paying for all construction costs and all the plants.“We’re going to make something nice for the community,” Ford said.
When the city approved the project, the couple got to work the very next day. You’ll see Ford and her husband plantingmilkweed and landscaping the 1,800-square-foot site at Legacy Park most weekends. Everything planted at the butterfly garden is all native flowers and shrubbery.
“They’re all regionally native to Malibu,” Ford said. “The plant species would’ve been there for thousands of years andas a result, they host their native insects, butterflies, and native bees. There will be signs and it’s going to be reallyuplifting. It’s going to have butterflies and it’s going to have information about what people can do in their own yards, balconies, or even just in one small planter, to help butter butterflies and other pollinators.”
This spring, on March 16, 2025, the group intends to have an opening day ceremony where people will gather among the 100 plants, flowers, and four trees planted in the garden. There will even be a plant giveaway so participants can start attracting butterflies at home.
“I find butterflies to be really uplifting and life affirming,” Ford said. “A garden opens your eyes to things that you might not even know exist and you start to see the kind of details in life, you start to see caterpillars, you see butterflies.You can witness the metamorphosis, and that definitely brings an air of magic into your day, watching a butterfly when they hatch. It’s something that’s really kind of a magical thing to witness and it takes you away from the normal hum drum of life. I think it’s good for the imagination, but it’s also healing to be in nature and even through one planter.
“That’s how I started off. I had one planter with milkweed in it, which is the house plant for monarchs. Later came eggs and caterpillars. They went through the metamorphosis and after seeing that happen, I thought wow, I really want to help these beautiful creatures. It can be really good for the psyche and very good for healing but it’s also just fun.”
For more information or to make a donation, go to www.pollinatorfund.org