Wednesday 26 September 2007

Butterflies

Inspired by Kate's non-vegetable comments, I thought you might be interested in a different aspect of my garden. Through my involvement with Guides, I met a lady called Jan Forrest. She's had a huge impact on my life, especially when it comes to being outside and adventurous. Jan works at the SA museum and specialises in insects. She has a particular passion for butterflies and has recently converted the small patch of garden in front of her unit to a "butterfly garden" by planting things that attract caterpillars. You might have seen an article in the paper about her recently headed "Bring back butterflies".
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22456492-2682,00.html

A couple of months ago, she generously gave Chris and I lots of butterfly attracting seedlings for our garden as a wedding present. They are local to my area. (I live close to the Fern Ave Garden and Winsor St so many of the plants she gave me can be seen on Windsor St.) I've planted them and can't wait to see if they work! She assures me the caterpillars are plant specific and won't move across to the vegie patch once I've attracted them.

If you're interested in adding butterflies to your garden, you'll find this site helpful.
http://www.butterflygardening.net.au/
It also has interesting information about what plants are native in your specific area.

1 comment:

Kate said...

The butterfly gardening website is so great I will put a link to it.