Altman Plants, The Home Depot Promote Monarch Butterflies on Earth Day

Posted by Brian Sparks|May 2, 2023

On Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, Smart Planet, an Altman Plants brand available exclusively at The Home Depot, hosted milkweed plant giveaway events at 20 Home Depot store locations throughout California, Texas, and Arizona. Customers who stopped by the Smart Planet booths outside of The Home Depot garden centers were educated about sustainable gardening and given young milkweed plants, an essential food source for monarch caterpillars on which adult females lay their eggs.

Every year, monarch butterflies migrate as far as 3,000 miles south in the fall and return to breeding areas in the spring. In recent years however, the Xerces Society estimates that the number of butterflies making the annual journey has dropped by more than 95% in some cases. Forces like climate change, the conversion of breeding habitats for agriculture, and adverse land management practices that are reducing native plants and grasses have created an immediate threat for monarchs and other species. These increasingly accelerating threats to the earth’s ecosystems are leading brands and organizations like Smart Planet and The Home Depot to invest in sustainable gardening initiatives that can help to reverse these effects.

“Our Smart Planet team was overwhelmed by the terrific turnout across all 20 of our milkweed giveaway events at partnering Home Depot stores,” says Justin Dautoff, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Altman Plants. “It’s our mission to help our customers grow beautiful, environmentally friendly home gardens and natural spaces. That’s why it’s really fulfilling to see how well they responded to Smart Planet’s sustainability initiatives and their excitement in partnering with us to cultivate eco-friendly gardens that benefit pollinators and other native wildlife around us.”

In addition to benefiting the monarch population, milkweed plants provide food and shelter for other wildlife and pollinators such as bees, hummingbirds, wasps, and non-monarch butterflies. To learn more about milkweed and its benefits, visit smartplanetmilkweed.com.

Smart Planet and The Home Depot will continue educating customers about sustainable gardening with four more milkweed giveaway events in the greater Chicago area on Saturday, May 13.