Planning Your Butterfly Garden

by webmann on June 6, 2009

Image by Chris & Lara Pawluk via Flickr

When creating a butterfly garden, the possibilities of what to include in your butterfly garden designs are endless. Below are some suggestions to help get you started when designing your butterfly garden plan. They are designed to spark the creative process of your mind and get you started on your way to creating a lovely and well-suited butterfly garden.

- First, before you even begin your butterfly garden, find out which species of butterflies are in your area. Consider taking an exploratory hike around your location with a butterfly identification book to find the butterflies that dwell close to your property. This may take a little extra time and some research on your part but the results will be worth the effort. After you have compiled your list of local butterfly species, be sure to write down in your butterfly garden plan what these particular species of butterflies use for nectar and food plants.

- Be sure that your butterfly garden plan includes a location that provides at least six hours of sunlight per day. Butterflies are cold-blooded creatures and therefore, do better where they are warm and sheltered.

- Wind can be a butterfly’s worst enemy so be sure to have plenty of wind protection in your butterfly garden design. You can plant tall shrubs and other plants in order to create a wind break. Know the direction of your area’s prevailing winds. The first choice, however, is a nice ‘tucked away’ location that avoids heavy winds.

- Keeping the above points in mind, choose a suitable location to have your butterfly garden. The best of all worlds would be a butterfly garden placed on the south side of your home with windbreaks on both the west and east sides. You may also wish to be sure that you are able to view you butterfly garden from inside your home as well as provide seating outside from which to observe the antics of the butterflies.

- If your area permits, a possible suggestion for location of a butterfly garden is provided by Barbara Damrosch in her book Theme Gardens. She suggests the use of an old basement or home foundation if such is available around your home or the place you wish to have your butterfly garden. As an alternative, you can excavate an area and build a stone wall around the excavation to simulate an old construction foundation. Remember to covered the bottom of the excavation with several inches of gravel where you do not intend to plant your nectar and food plants for the butterflies. This will save you from a muddy walk through your butterfly garden after a rain.

There are many creative ways for constructing a butterfly garden. Take your time to design a garden that you will enjoy and be proud of later when all is said and done.

Source: http://www.backyardgardeningtips.com/backyard-garden/planning-your-butterfly-garden/

Students turning park into butterfly garden

 KTIV NewsChannel 4 Sioux City IA: News, Weather and Sports

Posted: June 2, 2009 06:12 AM

Students turning space into butterfly garden

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KTIV) -- It started with an idea to make a change, and now it's a reality for some middle school students.

Back in October, East Middle School students joined a club called "We Can Change the World Challenge". The students met twice a week after school planning to make-over a green space in Sioux City.

The students worked with the city of Sioux City, planning and organizing their project to make-over Macomb Park in Morningside. Now, they are seeing their hard work come to life.

"We have a butterfly garden and there are some little stones that you can walk through and benches and we're going to put up a fence around it and we have a spot where we're going to put the sign in and there are flowers all around that," says Courtney Uhl, East Middle School student.

The students and other volunteers have transformed the space over the last three days. The Junior League gave them a $2,000 grant to help pay for flowers and they will be installing a playground.

Students say despite the hard work and the initial challenges, it was worth all of the hard work.

"We hope to be an inspiration to other young adults. Just because you are told no, doesn't mean you should give up," says Shelbie Uhl, East Middle School student.

The students and other volunteers will be taking care of the garden the rest of the summer.

Butterfly Peace Garden in Sri Lanka

Hivos Butterfly Peace Garden

Allowing traumatised children in Sri Lanka to once again be ‘butterflies’

Children should be able to play, to laugh, to enjoy life. But for years now in eastern Sri Lanka they have not been able to do that. Countless children there have been victim to horrifying experiences. The main cause for this is the armed conflicts between the country’s different ethnic groups. Trauma centre Butterfly Peace Garden hopes to help these children regain their zest for life.

Butterfly Peace Garden wishes to allow children to crawl out of the cocoons in which their war traumas hold them – in order to make ‘butterflies’ of them again. To that end, this Hivos partner uses a special method. Each year it selects, together with parents and teachers, fifty traumatised pupils between 7 and 15 years of age. These children are invited to a special garden two days during the school week plus weekends. There, in a green and safe environment, they can play games, cuddle animals, take care of plants, make music, paint, draw, sculpt, put on stage performances and tell stories.

‘That is not only fun, but it also helps them to process their traumas calmly and to heal,’ says the Canadian Paul Hogan, instigator and advisor of the centre. ‘For nine months the children are coached by creative therapists. These therapists have often been traumatised themselves. Many even spent time in the Butterfly Peace Garden as children. They know from their own experiences that art and play are elements of a healing therapy.’

Hivos has been supporting the Butterfly Peace Garden in Batticaloa since its founding in 1997. ‘If children overcome their traumas and heal, they are much stronger for it and are able to then console traumatised family members or neighbours,’ says Hivos staff member Artien Utrecht. ‘That stimulates peace.’ She visited the trauma centre several times and saw with her own eyes how children’s creations helped them learn to talk about their pent-up experiences. ‘A wonderful thing about this is that they also learn to interact with peers from other ethnic groups,’ she says. ‘Tamil, Muslim and Christian children play side by side in the garden.’

The support for Butterfly Peace Garden is part of the Hivos programme Human Rights and Democratisation. In conflict-prone Sri Lanka, Hivos gives special attention to initiatives that stimulate peace and inter-ethnic relations.

Butterfly garden Dedicated to the memory of Emily, a second-grader

Butterfly garden Dedicated to second-grader - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Cooper City school dedicates butterfly garden as a memorial to second-grader who died in May
Butterfly garden a memorial to second-grader who died in May

By Chris Guanche | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 21, 2008

When butterflies fly through Embassy Creek Elementary School in Cooper City, they'll have a special meaning now.

The butterflies, and the garden patterned after them, are part of a memorial to Emily Adamson, a second-grader who died of cancer in May. Emily had spent several years battling neuroblastoma, a cancer commonly found in children and infants.

Following Emily's death, students and their families showed an outpouring of support, said Principal Robert Becker.

Becker said the school wanted to feature a fitting memorial for Emily that would mean more than just a plaque with her name. "We wanted to do something special, something that could be used by all children," he said.

Becker said Emily's love of butterflies kicked off the idea to create a garden focused on them. Emily's father, David Adamson, said she collected butterfly cocoons and watched them grow in the hospital during a November 2007 relapse.

"It was always a big thing to her," Adamson said...............
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