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Alfresco
art is the city's grace Enjoy art outside, from Dale Chihuly's glorious and sometimes
gloppy glass at New York Botanical Garden to an eccentric 'Corner Plot' near Central
Park
Bar
is denied license for a beer garden
Busch
Gardens to detail new attraction on Wed
Citizens sue over approval of 606 homes in Garden Valley Group says Boise County
Commission called a private session on Southfork Landing without following law
Commissioner's
idea makes Lake Tobesofkee home to butterfly garden
Enjoy
rhythm and blues at Botanical Garden
Garden
oasis opens at Arlington Memorial
Garden
of youth Middle schoolers' summer project is a part of a national trend that lets
students learn how to grow, distribute and enjoy organic food
GARDEN
STEPPINGSTONES
Hillside
garden a labor of love
On
the grounds New gardens, old buildings will greet 2006 Fair visitors
Plant
a rain garden
Retail
'village' rises in Winter Garden
Time
to give your garden a late-summer pick-me-up
Water,
water everywhere Going away Planning will keep your garden green
Commissioner's
idea makes Lake Tobesofkee home to butterfly garden
Showing off
Bibb County's latest effort to draw visitors to Lake Tobesofkee, Bert Bivins pried
open a folded spice bush leaf to reveal what looked like the head of a snake no
longer than a fingernail.
Tan above, white below, it appeared to be peering
up at the Bibb County commissioner. But the reptilian markings are the unusual
disguise of a caterpillar that will, with a little luck, become a swallowtail
butterfly one day.
It lives in a 40-by-100-foot butterfly garden in Claystone
Park. The brightly colored natural attraction, Bivins' idea, cost only about $1,500
to create near the camping area, said county engineer Ken Sheets. The work was
all done by county employees and Bivins, who paid for some of the plants himself,
Sheets said.
The county plans to add benches and make the garden the beginning
of a trail through the woods, Bivins said, and a resident has volunteered to label
all the plants. Bivins, a retired teacher, hopes classes learning about metamorphosis
can take some of the caterpillars and raise their own butterflies, possibly visiting
the butterfly garden on field trips. Just a few months after work there began,
tiny skipper butterflies zipped around the garden while larger, orange-patterned
gulf fritillaries drank from zinnias.
Black-spiked fritillary caterpillars
were munching so enthusiastically on wildly wiry purple passion vine that Bivins
had to plant more Wednesday. He has a new appreciation for the vine he called
a "maypop" as a child. Back then, its chief attraction was the bulbous
green fruit it provided to throw at his buddies. Bivins first became interested
in planting flowers for butterflies when his own children were small. "So
I planted flowers, but the first year, I still didn't see butterflies. I remembered
my grandmother had flowers butterflies used to be found on -- flowers I wasn't
that fond of -- but I planted them and had butterflies."
Those zinnias
started his research. Bivins and county employees learned as they planned the
garden, focusing not only on the nectar butterflies enjoy sipping, but also the
plants where they lay their eggs.
Jerry Payne, a retired entomologist who
lives in Bibb County and organizes the butterfly counts for the state, praised
the efforts to provide host plants for caterpillars.
"Most people when
they garden for butterflies manage it as a pub to attract adult butterflies,"
Payne said. "They gather there to drink liquor and meet chicks. But you should
grow your own butterflies, too."
For monarch caterpillars, milkweed
is delectable, while black swallowtails lay their eggs on parsley and fennel.
Bivins
said he has contacted garden clubs in hopes that volunteers will help maintain
the garden in future years.
"It's worthwhile because the amount of
butterflies in Georgia is like dropping a feather in the Grand Canyon and waiting
for the echo," Payne said. "We still haven't heard it yet."
This
year Payne found butterfly populations lower than he has seen them. Only about
half the usual number of species have been seen during Middle Georgia butterfly
counts, and total numbers of butterflies are down about 30 percent.
Payne
said he thinks the butterfly garden will draw older residents and young people
to Claystone Park.
