Gulf fritillaries, monarch, and others

The purple lantana against the walls in the lower lawn garden (next to the Discovery Center) have been alive with butterflies the last few days.

Monarchs, pipevine swallowtails, tiger swallowtails, gulf fritillaries, variegated fritillaries, and skippers of all sorts are all over the flowers.

Similarly, the new Butterfly Garden has been full of flowers, caterpillars, and butterflies. It's been magical.  I wrote a post about a Gulf Fritillary chrysalis, spotted early this week, on my Natural Gardening blog.

The 'new' butterfly garden

It's been a fabulous first year for our Butterfly Garden.  It looks great, but more importantly, has hosted butterfly adults and caterpillars in abundance.  This summer and fall, we've been thrilled to see Sleepy Orange, Cloudless Sulphur, Monarch, Gulf Fritillary, and Black Swallowtail caterpillars taking advantage of the host plants we planted for them.

Here's a piece I posted on Natural Gardening with a photo of a cloudless sulphur butterfly. 

This is a great example of how providing host plants means adult butterflies (they were fluttering around this afternoon).

Planting day in the new SCBG Butterfly Garden

Who-hoo! How fabulous to have a new site, many great new plants, and more to come, with such a nice group of folks to help plant and learn about butterfly gardening.

Rosie, Linda, Jackie, and Jeff planting

Here are more images from this morning.

Gathering together

Getting ready (the Turners and Kathy Bridges, an SCBG horticulturist)

Planting with Carolyn Turner, Donna Crader, Linda Alston-Binic, and Rosie Bayer

Our butterfly gardening friends, John and Carolyn Turner, and I are SO excited with the new site for the Butterfly Garden. John Bodiford and Kathy Bridges (our horticultural staff colleagues) along with James Arnold (on grader duty for this project - thanks, James!) were totally supportive, and I know I'm just grateful and pleased.

Our Lake and Hills Garden Club friends, who underwrote our initial butterfly garden planting (thanks so very much), turned out too, represented by club president Rosie Bayer and butterfly-garden liaison Linda Alston-Binic.

We had a monarch-tagging as a dedication. Photos to come.

Butterfly gardening

We'll be breaking ground for a 'new' Butterfly Garden near the Nature Center (in the Children's Garden area) in early August. It's an exciting opportunity to add more host plants for the caterpillars of native butterflies, but also to demonstrate the wonderful range of nectar plants that Upstate gardeners can grow in their gardens. Stay tuned!

I visited a seasonal butterfly house today that was simple and effective - an excellent model for the seasonal house that we hope to have in the future.