Carol Saunders’ metamorphosis began last year as she gazed at the thick green lawn surrounding her Brookfield home and thought: Ugh. This has got to go.
In a sunny corner of the back yard, Saunders tore out the Kentucky bluegrass and replaced it with a kidney bean- shaped swath of native and non-native plants–including swamp milkweed, purple coneflower, phlox, ornamental grasses and Mexican sunflowers. The plants grew tall and bloomed into a riotous palette. They never needed mowing.
Soon, they began attracting bugs, and then those bugs begot more bugs.
Ahhh, thought Saunders. Much better.
Saunders is a Brookfield Zoo animal behavior specialist whose interest in conservation has taken her to the tropics to study primates. But last fall, she decided to see whether she could score one for conservation in her own back yard.
She planted a “butterfly garden,” a collection of native and non-native plants designed to attract butterflies. They bloomed this summer, and Saunders sat back and waited for beauty to blow in on the wind.
“Butterflies make wonderful conservation ambassadors,” says Saunders. “People don’t fear them and yet they’re very noticeable and do fun things.”
She is among a growing army of homeowners who are recapturing ground from the lookers of the landscape world–geraniums, impatiens and all those overly popular flowers that offer little to wildlife–and turning them over to plants with more animal magnetism.
“A butterfly garden pulls you out of your intellect and into your senses,” says Vicki Nowicki. She and her husband, Ronald, co-owners of the Downers Grove landscape architectural company The Land Office, transformed Saunders’ yard. “It’s being with color, smells, the sound of the wind. It puts you in a different place within yourself. You’re experiencing rather than analyzing.
“In this information age we’re always listening to the news, information, the computer Internet and all of this,” says Nowicki. “But this is the real network out here, the network of life.”
Just as it can be difficult to track the ephemeral butterfly, it can be hard to gauge the environmental and economic impact of “butterfliers,” as watchers of these bugs are known. But anecdotal evidence suggests that both interest and impact are widespread and growing.
In the Chicago area, designers such as Nowicki say that the number of people who landscape for butterflies and other wildlife increases each year, and local botanical gardens have begun offering special classes to accommodate enthusiasts.
Butterfly excursions to places like Costa Rica, Mexico and the American West, like the birding trips on which they are modeled, are popular and becoming more numerous. Books and videos on butterflies and butterfly gardening are multiplying like fast-breeding insects, and North America now boasts about 20 butterfly houses–kind of like zoos for butterflies.
Butterfliers count
The number of volunteers counting butterflies during the annual 4th of July butterfly census increased 33 percent between 1993 and 1995, and 900 percent since the first tabulation in 1975. Groups catering to butterfly enthusiasts–including the North American Butterfly Association in New Jersey and the Xerces Society in Oregon–report surging membership.
“When I first started 15 or 16 years ago, I couldn’t find any interest at all in insects of any kind,” says Ron Panzer, a conservation biologist at Northeastern Illinois University who manages several prairies. “Now, volunteers are calling all the time. . . . The movement nationally is mushrooming.”
The interest in butterflies stems in part from a growing interest in home landscaping with native plants. In the Chicago area, that can translate into back-yard prairie patches in lieu of precisely sculpted flower beds, and white oak saplings instead of exotic trees.
“Rather than planting all this stuff that looks pretty on the surface but is unhealthy, people are trying a different approach,” says Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association Inc.
“If tremendous numbers of people get into creating habitats that are healthy and constructed for butterflies, that kind of movement will alter the face of America over the next 20 years.”
Conservation piece
Glassberg, a molecular biologist, sold the DNA fingerprinting company he founded and drew on a childhood interest to establish the butterfly society.
“Although the DNA fingerprinting has had some major effects in the world, I really think butterflies are going to have more of an effect,” says Glassberg, author of the book “Butterflies Through Binoculars” (Oxford University Press, $55).
That is because the interest in butterflies may start with their beauty but leads to broader ecological concerns. People commonly follow butterflies out of their back yards and into a thicket of conservation questions, both local and international, to which there are hard choices but no pat answers.
Close to home, for example, there is the question of prairie restoration and prairie butterflies. In recent years, some remnant tracts and restored patches of tall-grass prairie in the Midwest have been maintained through regularly scheduled and controlled fires. These burns restore nutrients to the soil, promote the growth of wildflowers and spur the sprouting of long-dormant seeds.
But they also can kill butterflies and other rare insects. Conservationists now are debating where, whether and when to burn prairies so that all components of that rare ecosystem can thrive.
“There aren’t huge numbers of butterflies specific to prairies but there are some real nice ones–the Karner blue, the regal fritillary and some skippers,” says Paul Opler, author of several butterfly field guides and videos and an officer in a number of butterfly organizations. “If prairies are burned too often, they can lose these butterflies.”
Getting a read
Butterflies are indicator species, barometers that measure ecological health. Frequently, they have different needs for food and habitat at each of the four different stages in their life cycle.
They are extremely sensitive to weather–with populations growing and shrinking due to rain, cold, snow and sun.
Butterflies also can be hair-trigger sensitive to pesticides. Some are important pollinators of wild and domesticated plants, while others recycle nutrients by feeding on rotting fruit or the excrement of other animals. And all of them, at all stages of life, are important food for other species, particularly insects and birds.
“A lot of the flowers and plants in the forests and fields depend on insects to make things happen,” says Sam Droege, a biologist with the office of inventory and monitoring in the National Biological Service in Maryland. “They’re the background, low-profile maintenance workers. We don’t see them an awful lot, but without them, the whole system would fall apart.”
Because insects are particularly sensitive to environmental change and degradation, federal biologists want to begin nationwide tracking of some populations. If such monitoring is soon begun, the biologists expect to follow butterflies, piggybacking off the work of volunteers.
A small group of people across the country began an annual butterfly count during the mid-1970s, and the network today has grown to encompass 260 teams of counters in 45 states. In addition, some regions–including Chicago–have been monitoring butterflies during the warm months as a way of gauging other environmental issues, such as the health of existing and restored prairies.
Chicago-area volunteers have collected the most complete data, and Droege and others are determining whether the methods used to count butterflies here can be standardized and adopted by volunteers nationwide. In this time of federal budget cuts, volunteers are the only way to “fund” such a study.
FIVE TIPS FOR LURING BUTTERFLIES TO YOUR GARDEN
If you’ve decided to turn your garden into an Eden for butterflies, garden designer Vicki Nowicki has this advice for you:
1. Eliminate chemicals from your gardening routine; try organic maintenance procedures as alternatives.
2. Put your butterfly garden in a sunny area that’s protected from the wind.
3. Plant flowers in stands of colors and be sure to deadhead them so the nectar is continually fresh.
4. Provide a puddling area by sinking an almost full pail of sand into the ground and filling it with water. Butterflies can’t drink water, they have to have moist sand from which to drink.
5. Provide a flat of basking stones because butterflies need to spread out their wings and bask in the sun.
TO LEARN MORE
Here are some additional sources of information about butterflies and butterfly and wildlife gardening:
Read all about it
– “Peterson First Guides, Butterflies and Moths” by Paul A. Opler, illustrated by Amy Bartlett Wright (Houghton Mifflin Co., $4.95).
– “A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies” by Paul A. Opler (Houghton Mifflin Co., $24.95).
– “Handbook for Butterfly Watchers” by Robert Michael Pyle, illustrated by Sarah Anne Hughes (Houghton Mifflin Co., $12.95).
– “Butterflies Through Binoculars: A Field Guide to Butterflies in the Boston-New York-Washington Region” by Jeffrey Glassberg (Oxford University Press, $55).
– Audubon Society’s “Butterflies for Beginners” video guide to identifying back-yard butterflies; 64 minutes (MasterVision, $19.95). The Audubon Society’s “Butterfly Gardening” video (MasterVision, $24.95), a 64-minute guide to some of the best commercially available butteryfly-attracting plants in North America, is due out in late fall. To order either video, call 1-800-876-0091.
Organizations
– The Wild Ones comprises homeowners who are trying to learn more about growing plants to attract butterflies, birds and other wildlife. The group trades ideas and learns more through programs and field trips. Write to them at: 612 Staunton Rd., Naperville, Ill. 60565.
– The North American Butterfly Association caters to people interested in “all aspects of recreational, netless, butterfly appreciation, including butterfly gardening, identification, photography and conservation.” Write to them at 4 Delaware Rd., Morristown, N.J. 07960.
– The Xerces Society is a conservation organization devoted solely to the preservation of invertebrates, including butterflies. The organization takes its name from the Xerces Blue butterfly, the first butterfly in North America known to become extinct as a result of human interference. Write to them at 4828 Southeast Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, Ore. 97215.
– The Lepidopterists’ Society, a non-profit group formed in 1947, is composed of more than 1,700 amateur and professional members in more than 50 countries. Write to them at c/o Ron Leuschner, publications manager, 1900 John St., Manhattan Beach, Calif. 90266.
