Fresno company offers free butterfly gardening tools to residents

Fresno residents can pick up free milkweed plants at Home Depot, 7150 N. Abbey St., from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, April 18, in an Earth Day giveaway meant to help yards support monarch butterflies.

The event is being run by Altman Plants through its Smart Planet brand, which says it will host similar giveaways at select Home Depot stores in California, Arizona and Texas. Smart Planet is a Home Depot-exclusive brand, and the Fresno stop is part of a broader push to place young native milkweed plants in home gardens at no cost.

That matters because monarchs depend on milkweed as their larval host plant, and California wildlife officials say the western monarch population that overwinters along coastal California has declined sharply. The right milkweed choice is especially important in the Central Valley, where University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources guidance for Fresno, Clovis and nearby communities recommends native milkweed species for local planting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has also said pesticide-free narrowleaf milkweed can help monarch reproduction in Southern California.

Altman Plants presents the giveaway as part of a larger conservation-minded business strategy. The company says it started as a hobby in a Los Angeles backyard in 1975 and is still family-owned and operated. It now describes itself as the largest horticultural grower in the United States, a scale that gives its community outreach a reach most local nurseries cannot match.

For Fresno, the giveaway offers an easy entry point for residents who want to make their yards more colorful while supporting pollinators at the same time. Milkweed is not just a seasonal decorative choice; it is the plant monarch caterpillars need to survive, which makes the selection of native, pesticide-free varieties especially important in a dry, hot climate like the Valley’s.

The timing also fits a spring gardening season when homeowners are already thinking about curb appeal, shade, and drought-tolerant landscaping. By tying an Earth Day event to a free plant pickup at a well-known retail location, Altman Plants is turning a simple distribution into a visible local reminder that small yard changes can have a wider ecological effect in Fresno County.