Boyd Post and Nancy Van Scoyoc inspect the honey drawer
Lake Ridge, VA, June 19—Residents are buzzing at Westminster at Lake Ridge, a continuing care retirement community in Lake Ridge, VA, about the latest addition to its newly restored butterfly garden. A wooden beehive with an active colony of honey bees has recently been placed next to the Westminster Butterfly Garden in a retirement community already renown for its natural beauty.
“The beehive is the crowning touch to an area of the community that already houses the butterfly garden, the vegetable garden and a large pond,” says resident Boyd Post, the head of the Landscape Committee. “I was fishing the other day when a bald eagle swooped in and snatched a fish out of the pond!”
The Westminster butterfly garden was developed by residents in 1993, but eventually fell into disrepair. “Over time the butterfly garden became choked with weeds,” says Dona Hobbs, a Landscape Committee member, who along with other residents tried to restore the garden in 2011. “We discovered that weeding and replanting was a larger job than we had anticipated and would take many months.”
The butterfly garden was fully restored when Jake Remington, a Boy Scout and son of a volunteer resident, submitted a plan to redo the garden as his Eagle Scout project. The Westminster butterfly garden project was completed in October 2012.
“While residents certainly enjoy the beauty of the restored butterfly garden, I’m reminded of the words of Arlene Hill, one of the garden’s founding members, who said ‘The theory of a butterfly garden is not if the garden is beautiful, but if it’s beneficial to the butterflies,’” says resident Nancy Van Scoyoc, another Landscape Committee member.
Post and Von Scoyoc in the butterfly garden
Westminster at Lake Ridge is a Continuing Care Retirement Community located near the historic riverside town of Occoquan, Virginia, just across the Occoquan River from Fairfax County, and approximately 30 minutes from Washington, D.C. Residents enjoy opportunities promoting wellness, lifelong learning, the choice of a maintenance-free cottage or apartment, housekeeping, dining, parking, transportation, and other on-site amenities–all in a beautiful, wooded campus environment featuring two ponds, gardens, and wooded trails.
