Butterfly Garden

“Play is not a Luxury. Play is a Necessity.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Beauty from Darkness

In our garden we show our children there is beauty amidst the darkness they know all too well. At the Hilltop Butterfly Garden children explore nature and learn to care for others and themselves and THEY become world changers.

Why a Butterfly Garden?

Over the last several years, the Hilltop of Columbus has become a dark, painful place, due to high rates of human trafficking, opiate overdoses, gun violence, prostitution, and homelessness. More than 130 synthetic drugs are produced and sold on the streets. Our city nationally ranks on the top five in Human Trafficking and opiate overdose deaths. These conditions have led to the Hilltop’s double our county’s average infant mortality rate.

But out of darkness, there is love. Love takes shape in the form of a butterfly garden from which children in our neighborhood can see and realize something better when we work together. At the garden we offer camping experiences and educational opportunities that teach children self-respect and to love one another through planting and growing flowers and other projects. We dream that someday we can build a small house for a survivor of human trafficking and minimize the vandalism.

The Hilltop Butterfly Garden has become a site of play and beauty where the seed of love blooms in a broken neighborhood.