The Butterfly Park in New Richmond is about rebirth in more ways than one

The empty lot at the corner of Willow Street and Light Street in New Richmond is slowly transforming. A stone labyrinth swirls across the ground once littered with trash. Tufts of small green native plants, meant to attract butterflies, line the edge, with room for more later.

It is home to a new butterfly garden that will be maintained by the staff and residents of two local addiction recovery homes – a way for them to find peace and strengthen their community connections during their recovery journey.

Rebirth means several things at this crossroads. Located next to the restless Ohio River, New Richmond has always struggled with an age-old cycle: flooding. Recovery. Flood. Recovery. There was a huge one in 1937. Another in 1996. And another year later in 1997.

As people gather to dedicate the garden on a recent drizzly Sunday, Anita Lenhardt remembers that flood. She points to the other side of the street.

“I actually grew up there on that corner,” she says. ‘There’s nothing there now. The 1997 flood just destroyed everything my family owned.”

The 1997 flood destroyed 40 homes and damaged 395 others. The new garden once contained one of them. The June 10, 1997, issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that water from the March flood filled the first floor of the light blue house owned by 70-year-old Edna Hadley and built by her late husband 46 years earlier. The city purchased the property and dozens of others later with FEMA green space conversion funds.

“We have cleaned up after floods before,” local business owner Lee Ann Hodges told the newspaper at the time. “If it happens again, we will clean it up again.”

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Gardening as an act of recovery

The flood is not Lenhardt’s only connection to this place. She works for On Our Way Home, the nonprofit organization that partners with the village on the garden. It runs a men’s recovery home down the street, where Lenhardt works. She lives in the organization’s women’s recovery home in Bethel. Like other residents, she volunteers to help maintain the garden.

Her own journey through addiction began 15 years ago with a back injury and a prescription for pain medication.

“I had everything a person could want,” she says. “And then that first pill I took, that was my whole life after that.”

Lenhardt is currently attending school to guide others in overcoming addiction. The symbolism of butterflies – their start as a caterpillar, their withdrawal into a cocoon, their re-emergence – resonates with her.

“That’s what I think about, the way you turn into something beautiful, something you were always meant to be,” she says.

New Richmond Village Administrator Kathryn Bailey says the land has undergone its transformation thanks to a grant the village and Clermont County collaborated on.

“This was just a junkyard,” she says. ‘Literal. We had to have the trash removed. We removed old cars.”

The village wants to connect the land with other plots that have been converted into greenery. The next goal: a bird sanctuary nearby.

“I think what it stands for is a beautiful thing,” Bailey says. “Rebirth.”

Beauty after hardship

As Bailey explains the cleanup, people register for a garden introduction ceremony.

Gary Cunningham has been an enthusiastic guide all morning for anyone interested in space.

“Hey, you guys want to come up? Come on in, we’ll check it out,” he says to the people at the edges of the park as the ceremony begins.

Cunningham lives down the street from On Our Way Home’s men’s recovery center and works at a nearby restaurant. Like Lenhardt, he is one of the residents who will help with the maintenance of the garden.

Cunningham says the recovery home is essential to him. His struggle with substance abuse started with alcohol and then progressed to hard drugs. He faced homelessness when his former counselor, Emily Stoll, helped him get into the New Richmond home.

Stoll, who struggled with addiction himself, is now the director of support for On Our Way Home. She leads the opening ceremony of the garden. First there is a meditative walk through the labyrinth and taking photos in the new park.

The morning’s steady drizzle subsides just as Stoll delivers a short speech about hardship and struggle, resilience and growth. It is intended to reflect on the individual journeys people in recovery take, but the watery theme also resonates with the village’s periodic rebirth after floods.

“Rain is sometimes seen as an inconvenience, but it is truly a gift,” she says. “Like the challenges we face in life, it can bring growth and renewal. The rain that fell today will help this garden blossom and bloom. It reminds us that beauty often comes from moments of hardship.”

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To top it all off, Stoll, Cunningham and others hand out small envelopes to those in attendance. They contain live monarch butterflies. The crowd of several dozen people releases them all at once. There are gasps and cheers as the butterflies emerge and fill the air with flashes of orange.

Reconnecting with the community

Stoll says she hopes the transformation of this lot into a garden and its maintenance will make residents recovering from addiction feel like they are a bigger part of the village.

“There’s a lot of isolation in recovery because of guilt and shame and embarrassment and just barriers that our society puts in place,” she says. “But people can heal through community and relationships with others. This butterfly garden gives our residents the opportunity to be more involved in the community.”

That’s something Cunningham is excited about.

“How can I put this? Having a goal, being able to go there and make it ours,” he says.