The residents at Cedar Hill Assisted Living had the opportunity to learn all about butterflies Monday when a visitor from the Huntsville Botanical Gardens made her way to Selma to spread her knowledge and share tips with them. 

Amanda Maples, with the gardens, talked to the residents about ways to attract butterflies and even left them with brochures and seeds to start or continue growing their gardens.

“I love coming and just talking and educating the public; it doesn’t matter who they are whether it’s kindergarten all the way up to these wonderful folks here today,” Maples said. “I’ve enjoyed it very much. Everybody’s so sweet here, it just makes me happy.”

Mallieve Breeding, or Madam Butterfly as she is known to many people in Selma, also stopped by to talk about how the Queen City became the Butterfly Capital of Alabama. Through her efforts with what is now known as the Butterfly Capital Club, Breeding was able to get Selma on the map as the Butterfly Capitol in the early 1980s and in the process, was awarded her own nickname as Madam Butterfly.

After Breeding spoke with the residents, Selma Mayor George Evans spoke to them about the importance of butterflies and how he remembered Breeding when she came to the city council when he was a member.

Dianne King, activity director for the specialty care unit at Cedar Hill Assisted Living, said having the speakers there to talk with the residents was a great experience for everyone, and she was happy with how well they all seemed to receive the information.

“I think everybody was interested and I think they were awed by it and they learned things from it,” King said.

“Amanda was just happy to come and share all of this. It is so wonderful to share this information with all of these people and to hope that butterflies will come back.”

One resident, Patricia McDonald, has already been taking steps to revitalize the butterfly garden that Cedar Hill once had.

“When I came, I noticed this overgrown butterfly garden and I’ve always wanted to refresh it and get it going,” McDonald said. “And this past session, [King] started helping and we started doing things.”

They bought some plants and flowers and began working to bring it back to life.

“Patricia McDonald is the inspiration for all the flowers around the facility and it had started drawing the butterflies,” King said.

But the butterfly garden isn’t the only gardening project McDonald has been working on, she also enjoys working on the rose garden.

“I enjoy it quite a bit,” McDonald said. “Every morning about 6 a.m. I’m out there to look at the rose garden.”