Butterflies Love Meadow View flowers.

Pollinators are essential to human existence. They contribute to one out of three bites of food we eat. They are also directly responsible for the variety of flowering plants we enjoy. Yet their numbers are dwindling due, in large part, to habitat loss. The call to replant gardens for pollinators has swept across the nation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Interior even designated a National Pollinator Week to help raise awareness of the importance of these busy, necessary creatures.

Meadow View has joined the rally. Our landscape beds are registered as a Monarch Waystation with Monarch Watch organization. We are also registered with the National Pollinator Garden Network as part of the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge. As any good pollinator garden should have, our landscape beds include plants that provide a place for adult butterflies to lay their eggs and provide food for their larvae (HOST PLANTS). Others provide energy sources for adults to sustain themselves (NECTAR PLANTS).

BUTTERFLY HOUSE

Our Butterfly House has completed its task this year. We released our butterflies so they could prepare for winter, whether that was migrating South to Mexico or finding a place to overwinter here.

Visit our butterfly house next year to get up close and personal with butterflies in all their life stages; egg, caterpillar (larva), chrysalis and adult. Here are some recaps from this year:

We watched the butterflies slurp the nectar from flower blossoms and warm their wings on a bench. We watched as females laid their eggs on various host plants and then discovered how voracious developing larvae really were! It was incredible to see the grown caterpillars anchor themselves in a quiet location and change into a chrysalis. How exhilarating it was to see them all emerge in their newly transformed bodies!

There were butterfly factoids inside the house and an MVG staff member was available to give you more information. You had to watch where you stepped while inside as both butterflies and larvae had been found on the path. The plants inside the house were food for the butterflies. We had additional plants inside the greenhouse you could purchase for your own butterfly garden.

This was an exciting way to invite children to learn about gardening and the cycle of life. We hope you will join us next year when we erect our house again.

For more information about pollinator gardens, visit http://meadowview.com/pollinator-gardens/