I have been lucky enough to work at a fantastic garden for the past three years. I work in the wedding department and for most of my hours at the garden I am in a windowless office dealing with stressed out brides, but some days I actually get out. They offer some awesome classes and finally after three years of working there, I decided to take one. It's a nice perk of the garden to be able to take them for free... just have to help check in people, clean up and whatnot... yay!
So I signed up to take the Butterfly Container Workshop where I would learn how to make a container garden that will attract butterflies. The Propagator at the garden taught the class... who is basically the coolest person that works at the garden... so I knew I would have fun.
The class started with a basic overview of the life cycle of the butterfly and what it takes to attract and keep butterflies around the garden. Like mama butterflies lay their eggs on host plants... so when the baby caterpillars hatch... BAM instant food. Crazy. So after the little overview, we had the chance to pick out the plants we wanted. I wish I knew the names of the plants I picked, but the only one I recognized was parsley, which is food for caterpillars.Really I was grabbing pretty flowers that she said would attract lots of butterflies!
Then came the really fun part... we all took a tram out to our butterfly house to have a personal talk with the gardener that designed the butterfly house. So cool! Now even though I work at the garden, I don't really get to see the gardeners (except for meetings and stuff) so I never get to actually talk to them about the work they do. So I was super interested to hear from her all the cool stuff behind the house.
While I was listening intently on the gardener... I really don't remember much of what she said. Doh! I was so in aw of the house and all the butterflies around. The main thing I took away was that butterflies drink (nectar from flowers) and caterpillars eat. There were some plants that were eaten to sticks from the caterpillars. And let me say... there were some BIG caterpillars in that house. Some really weird looking ones too.
After the tour we headed back to the classroom to put together our containers. After looking around the house I got some good ideas about how I wanted it to look. There were lots of containers in the butterfly house that were so well put together, I wanted to try and recreate it.
In the end, I decided to use red and purple colored flowers with lots of green from the parsley. The main thing with containers is to have the different heights for visual interest, so I had some that would grow up and some that would grow out and down. The final product ended up being very green, but I am really happy with it. Once the flowers start to bloom it will be so colorful. I'm excited to see how it develops.
Another perk is that I was able to snag a bunch of left over plants after the class was over. So I ended up coming home and making another butterfly container... plus a couple extra.
I really love how they turned out and am so excited to start attracting some butterflies. I'll be moving them to the front porch though... I want to attract butterflies and caterpillars, but don't want them wrecking havoc on my Mom's garden. So we will try to direct them to the front yard!!
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