At our last meeting, we created our first butterfly garden. We used some of the advice found at the North American Butterfly Association's website on how to start a butterfly garden.
It's not too complicated, but basically we wanted to provide plants that are food for caterpillars, as well as nectar plants that butterflies are attracted to. We are providing for the entire life cycle of butterflies, hoping that they will stick around to enjoy our hard work.
Here is a list of what we planted. We used this to plan the layout of our garden so that taller plants will not block out the sunlight for the smaller ones.
This garden is exciting for us, since it is one we won't have to pull up after the season is over, like our vegetable gardens.
The children enjoyed being able to finally get outside and get dirty.
We were even able to find two milkweed plants at another elementary school's plant sale to go along with our butterfly bush. Milkweed is the only plant that monarch butterfly caterpillars will eat.
We gave them a good soaking, trying NOT to soak each other. (OK, some people might not have been trying very hard.)
We also added some landing spots to our garden, a large rock and a flat dish, so the butterflies could warm themselves in the sun. Butterflies are cold-blooded insects than need to warm up by basking in the sun.
And just for fun, we added three strawberry plants to our empty wheelbarrow planter. Veggies are good to eat, but fruits are so much sweeter! Two weeks later, there are several ready to eat.
