Barbara Deutsch, Guardian Angel to Butterflies
Watching Barbara move among the hillocks and shrubs she planted, spraying a gentle mist of water among riotous greenery, was like stepping into a fairytale. Photo: Liam O'Brien
Barbara died peacefully on January 30, 2025. She was 82. Her beloved husband Barry was by her side.
Barbara was a legend among Bay Area butterfly people and naturalists in general. More than 40 years ago she created an oasis in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood next to her home. The idea of “gardening for butterflies” was not on the public’s radar, and many of us unthinkingly associated the practice with fertilizers, tidy landscapes, and trimming dead flowers. Barbara’s approach was different. “So little time,” she would say, “so much to undo.”
Removing weeds and planting natives, larval food, and nectar plants, Barbara restored a strip of serpentine near 19th Street. The public was welcome to roam among the Echo Blues, Hairstreaks, Vanessas and other local butterflies who came to fly and rest there. Her work to re-create a thronging home for nature in a place written off to urban blight remains a model for us today. "A year of observation is worth three years of planting,” Barbara advised. Watch closely in the local parks and natural areas near you. Take note of the flowers each butterfly probes for nectar, and try to spot one depositing eggs on its larval food plant.
Beyond her own gardening, Barbara was a lynchpin, mentor, and friend to many in the local San Francisco nature movement. She wrote the CNPS Yerba Buena Chapter newsletter for many years. She contributed observations to the Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formally Golden Gate Audubon Society). She predated Tim Wong in supporting a Pipevine Swallowtail population, moving more than 500 caterpillars to the San Francisco Botanical Garden in the late 1980s. She regaled visitors with charming and informative stories at the National Park Service’s community outreach program in Fort Mason. “She told stories about the butterflies,” recalls Mia Monroe, herself a heroic nature supporter. The plot always included larval hosts and food plants.
In 2006, Barbara emailed the revered local butterfly expert Liam O’Brien about Green Hairstreak butterflies. Her sightings helped O’Brien rediscover long-missing local butterflies in Golden Gate Heights. His groundwork was the beginning of Nature in the City’s longstanding Green Hairstreak Corridor project. Barbara’s mentorship laid the groundwork for the Cho-En Butterfly Garden, created in 1993 by artist Reiko Goto. It flourishes today at Yerba Buena Gardens.
Barbara had a wide and deep intelligence not only about butterflies but extending far into natural history. Lori Wynn recalls her as “tiny, soft-voiced,” but “absolutely fierce!” A human rights activist, Barbara connected the struggle for a better life across all taxa. Those of us who were lucky enough to sit in Barbara’s Point Reyes kitchen sipping her homemade chai will never forget it. The company was largely caterpillars, crawling over the dining room table and into the living room. Watching her move among the hillocks and shrubs she planted, spraying a gentle mist of water among riotous greenery, was like stepping into a fairytale. Under Barbara’s numinous white up-do, she murmured greetings to the brethren whose lives she supported: birds, chorus frogs, grey fox, and of course, butterflies.
Donations in memory of Barbara can be made to Nature in the City, San Francisco Botanical Garden, and the River Otter Ecology Project.
Acknowledgements are due to Amber Hasselbring, Mia Monroe, Mary Ellen Hannibal, and Liam O’Brien for their contributions to this piece.
Further reading about Barbara:
A Haven for Butterflies, 1999 SF Gate article about Barbara’s 19th Street garden.