From the category archives:

Butterfly Gardening

Life Cycles of Butterflies in Your Habitat Garden

I was honored to write a guest post last week for the Little Humbugs Gardening with Chloe series about attracting more butterflies to your garden. In that article I discuss the importance of knowing which host plants are necessary to support the caterpillars of the butterflies you wish to attract.
Butterflies go through four distinctive stages [...]

Attracting Butterflies to Your Wildlife Garden

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I had the honor of writing a guest post for the always delightful Marghanita Hughes of Little Humbugs.
Here you’ll find my thoughts on attracting more butterflies to your wildlife garden, which is a great way to get children involved in the magic of nature and wildlife gardening.
While you’re there, spend some time looking around Marghanita’s [...]

Butterfly Gardening 2 comments

Monarch Butterfly Wintering Population at All Time Low

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The Monarch Butterfly winter population in Mexico is the lowest it’s been for 15 years.
According to Mike Quinn at Journey North:
This week, 36 hours of continuous rain fell primarily across the eastern
portion of Michoacan, and to a lesser extent throughout much of central
Mexico.
Heavy rain followed by a freeze killed as much as 80% of the [...]

Butterfly Gardening 8 comments

What Did Black Swallowtails Eat Before we Brought In Parsley, Dill, and Queen Anne’s Lace?

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Last week I used a photo of a Black Swallowtail Butterfly in a post, which prompted one of my favorite Ecosystem Gardeners, Cindy Brown Ahern, to post this comment on Facebook:
This is such a beautiful creature, and YOU can do something as simple as planting parsley, dill, fennel, carrots in your garden to provide a [...]

Butterfly Gardening 17 comments

Pat Sutton Talks about Butterfly Declines

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Pat Sutton is an amazing naturalist and educator with a passion for teaching people to create welcoming habitats for wildlife in our gardens. Her own garden is a beautiful testament to this passion, as it is always full of swirling butterflies, diving hummingbirds, gorgeous Goldfinches, acrobatic dragonflies, and all manner of other life.
This year, however, [...]

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Butterfly numbers plunge by 50 percent

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Butterfly lovers have noticed an alarming trend–butterfly numbers are down over 50 percent this year.
The North American Butterfly Association (NABA) has sponsored butterfly counts since 1992, and has noted significant drops in butterfly populations this year.
Pat Sutton is a founding member of NABA and has participated in these counts since their inception. To meet Pat [...]

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