Butterflies. Their beauty makes us gasp. Here is another gasp – full immersion native butterfly gardening turns your yard into a butterfly world. Admission is free every day.

Butterflies on red Pentas

Planting certain flowers, called adult food sources in butterfly lingo, like pentas, brings them in like the smell of French fries draws people to you know where. Adding host plants, like milkweed, a site where they can lay eggs and then the caterpillars, means you are going to be there for the whole metamorphis thing – butterflies, eggs, caterpillars, and then chrysalis emerging as butterflies.

A monarch butterfly crystalis. Look close and see the butterfly

Blue passion vine flower

Let’s see now – beautiful flowers, butterflies wafting through the air, saving their species for the future by ensuring they can lay eggs – oh, joy, what is the plan to do this?

giant swallowtail

WARNING: Butterfly gardening can be addictive. Once you get your first arbor and plant passion vine or pipe vine, there will be another, and another.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here we go:

• Start with inspiration. Walk around your neighborhood and see what butterflies are already there (assuming your neighbors have more than just grass and verbena bushes – this doesn’t cut it for butterflies). If you see no butterflies then you are going to be the local pioneer.

• Visit a paid admission butterfly garden like Butterfly Rainforest in Gainesville. Their Web site has a new identification guide. Take pictures then go on the Web and find the names.

• Another source of inspiration – Butterfly World in Coconut Creek. They really get into host plants. They have an arbor garden loaded with passion vines. Check out the Butterfly Campaign on their Web site. Visitors ask, “How can we bring butterflies back?” The answer: plant host plants so butterflies can lay their eggs.

Pipevine in bloom

• Another suggestion – Greathouse Butterfly Farm in Melrose. Check with them ahead of time about visiting hours – they change with the season.

• For free, go visit your nearest native plant nursery and walk around. One time when I needed milkweed badly (see my “Milkweed Crisis” blog) I went to Taylor Gardens Nursery, Inc. in Sparr. Both Gulf Fritillaries and Zebra Longwings, the Florida state butterfly, were swarming over the milkweed plants.

• Get a free pamphlet from your local Master Gardeners office on Florida butterflies and the host plants they need.

• Visit any of a number of Web sites about Florida butterflies for information on how to begin, nectar plants, host plants and the all important rule of thumb – stop using pesticides, they kill butterflies.

monarch caterpillar

• Check out your local community for any upcoming gardening festivals. Vendors will have host and nectar plants and they know which butterflies like which plants.

UPCOMING:

• The biggest event is the 17th annual Epcot Flower & Garden Festival opening March 3 and continuing until May 16.

• The Master Gardener Spring Festival in Ocala, March 12-13 is where I go for local inspiration.

• Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in Gainesville hosts their Spring Garden Festival March 26 and 27.

• In DeLand the Florida Wildflower & Garden Festival takes place March 26 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

• In Fort Pierce on Saturday, April 23 is the “Spring Into Gardening” festival.

Ah, spring. A perfect time to dig into native butterfly gardening. The winged wonders, these floating masterpieces, thank you in advance for saving their future.

Copyright 2011 Lucy Beebe Tobias, author of “50 Great Walks in Florida” and currently part of the Florida Audubon campaign 53 Parks in 53 Days.

Then you know, or have heard about, about Butterfly Rainforest attraction, an outdoor exhibit attached to the Museum. Wear bright clothing, especially red, and maybe butterflies will land on your clothes as you walk through their environment.

Inside the Museum are fossils galore, shark’s jaws, water stories, tales of Calusa Indians and you can even walk through time from the Eocene, 65 million years ago, to the Pleistocene when humans arrive 14,000 years ago (just yesterday!).

Why go visit the museum now? Say it with me – It is time for a change! We are in withdrawal from the Winter Olympics – what? No more curling? Plus, we are weary of winter, a cold season that has stayed on in Florida like an overripe house guest without the decency to leave.

Take charge, leave the house, go someplace with the thermostat set at 72 and a little on the wild side. I recommend the Florida Museum of Natural History. Admission is free and it is family friendly, making this museum my kind of place.

Just inside the entrance is a mastodon in the Central Gallery. Huge is an understatement. His tusks are thick, curved and look very fierce. Just his bones are on display but still, I’m very glad he is yesterday’s news and not coming soon to my neighborhood. His presence does however set the tone for a walk into the past as you go through the exhibits.

How easy it is to forget there was a Florida before Interstate 75. And what a vibrant, diverse heritage we have. The exhibits are clustered in permanent spaces.

Like sharks teeth? click to see a short video on shark jaws at Florida Museum

The exhibits put you in a different time and place. Watch water flow through a hardwood hammock and a limestone cave, see shark jaws so big you’ll reconsider going swimming, experience Indian village life and finally, my personal favorite, the Hall of Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life and Land. Who knew our history went back 65 million years? I did not. It was, and still is, fascinating news to me.

Museum hours are Monday – Saturday, 10-5 and Sunday 1-5. Address: University of Florida Cultural Plaza, SW 34th Street & Hull Road, Gainesville, phone (352) 846-2000. Closed Thanksgiving & Christmas. Website: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu

A word about exhibits – the Museum is free. Special temporary exhibits, like the quilt show, charge admission, as does Butterfly Rainforest. The quilt show entitled “Quilting Natural Florida II” costs $6 adults, $5 Florida residents, $4.50 seniors and Florida college students and free for youth 17 and under and museum members.

Butterfly Rainforest prices are $9.50 adults, $8 Florida residents, $7 ages 62 and up, $5 ages 3-12. Last admission is 4:30 p.m.

Every Saturday and Sunday Butterfly Rainforest sells butterfly-friendly plants, 10 plants each week plus an unannounced species. A list of what is on sale is under Plant Sales For example, the weekend of March 13-14 has Blanketflower, Blue eyed grass, Dianthus, Fetterbush, Impatiens, Passionflower, Lavender Lady, Plumbago, red, Sage, tropical, Sunshine Mimosa and Turkey Tangle Fogfruit.

March Museum events:
March 8, 10-11 Discover Hour for ages 2-8
March 20, 10-3 Can you dig it?
March 22, 10-11 Discovery Hour for ages 2-8
March 25, 7-9 p.m. Scott Sampson “Dinosaur Odyssey” Lecture & book signing.
March 27, 11-4 From “Vague” to Vision Quilt Workshop

Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention the big temptation just inside the front door – the Museum gift shop. Take a deep breath. Resist. Do the Museum first. The gift shop will still do its siren call to you on your way out.

Afterwards, should you not want to go home to dead plants and more freezing weather, just go next door to the Harn Museum of Art. Admission is free. Open Tuesday through Friday from 11-5, Saturday 10-5 and Sunday, 1-5. Closed Mondays and state holidays. In the basement is a delightful lunch spot, the Camellia Court Café open from 11-3.

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NOTE: We are grateful to you, our subscribers, for following Saturday Morning Magazine and in appreciation we have a gift for you – a free booklet on getting started walking in Florida. Here is the link. Enjoy

One day the birds complained to the Great Father
“Why did you make butterflies so beautiful? We feel left out.”
“What would you have me do?” God asked.
“Give them a flaw,” the birds said.
“Well, how about I make them silent,” the Great Father said and so it is that butterflies have no mouths. The birds went away pleased.
But in the fullness of time they returned to complain again.
“Why is it all the butterflies come to visit you?”
“Because,” God said, “I am the only one who understands them and they come to talk to me.”
That is why you can make a prayer, make a wish, send it with a butterfly and it will go straight to God. No one else will hear it.

Samuel Woodham, a tour guide at Greathouse Butterfly Farm, loves telling that American Indian story.
Greathouse is on State Road 26, 15 miles east of Gainesville, two miles past 301. As soon as you go through the light for CR 1469, you will see the Greathouse Butterfly Farm sign on your right followed shortly by a driveway into a large parking lot. It is in Earleton, two miles west of Melrose.
The butterfly farm raises 45 species of Florida butterflies in long greenhouses. There is a garden plant section with butterfly plants for sale, an extensive garden area showing plantings to attract butterflies, a gift shop located inside an old family farmhouse and daily tours of the grounds and the greenhouses.
Tours are at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. seven days a week and last about an hour to an hour and a half. No reservations necessary. (call ahead, hours and tours change with the season). The fee for adults is $8, children and seniors $6.
The tour starts with a video explaining a butterfly’s life and then moves outdoors.
On sunny days it looks like wild butterflies have Greathouse marked with a huge X on their internal roadmaps. As we take the tour through winding garden paths, zebra longwings, the state butterfly, zip by. Monarch butterflies, bright orange wings with black markings, feed on flowers and lay eggs on milkweed. Butterflies of many colors and names unknown to me, fly by, taste a flower and photographers snap away.
If you ever wanted these winged wonders in your yard, a Greathouse tour provides a visual introduction to what it takes, plus just walking through the gardens is a delight.
Butterflies like fast food – the nectar in flowers like salvia and butterfly bush. They also need host plants – certain plants for different species to be used as hosts to lay eggs. Some examples: milkweed for monarchs and passion vine for zebra longwings.
Haven’t seen any butterflies around your area? It could be more than a lack of host and nectar plants. Butterflies are a good judge of how an ecological system is doing. They are defenseless against pesticides, so gardeners who use them would have to change their habits to accommodate butterflies.
Zane Greathouse started the farm after his student experiments turned into a fulltime job. A fifth grade science teacher in Gainesville, Zane wanted his classes to have a hands on experience with animals, but not the frog dissection or the token guinea pig living in the back of the classroom.
So he went for insects and brought in crystallis that were ready to hatch. Students were each given one and asked not to talk, just write and draw their experiences. All day long the butterflies emerged and flew around the room.
It didn’t take long before word got around and Zane was doing the same lesson all over the country. An old family farm, built before the Civil War, became Greathouse Butterfly Farm.
In the greenhouses thousands of butterflies are grown for shipments to botanical gardens, wedding releases, memorial services and other events.
After the tour, a few of us linger. Will a butterfly listen to our wishes? We go back down the garden path to give it a try.

If you go
What: Greathouse Butterfly Farm, Inc.
Where: 20329 State Road 26 East, Earleton, Fl 32631
Phone: (352) 475-2088
Website: www.greathousebutterflyfarm.com
E-mail: butterflies@greathousebutterflyfarm.com
Closed: July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas

Reprinted with permission from the Observer newspaper. Lucy Beebe Tobias is a freelance writer, artist and photographer in Ocala, Florida. E mail: Lucy@lucyworks.com